


though the stars walk backwards

by redjacket



Series: live by love [1]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Major Character Undeath, repeated major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 04:36:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 58,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redjacket/pseuds/redjacket
Summary: The first time Diana meets Steve again, he doesn't remember her.The second time, it takes time.The third time, he finds her.Written for the 2018 WonderTrev fic exchange!





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this is super angsty before it gets better. And the trouble with repeated resurrection fics is you have to kill the character off multiple times too.

There was nothing to bury, the first time Diana lost Steve.

They found a few pieces of wreckage from the plane but though Diana searched and prayed, they never found his body. 

On the good days, she thought of the way Etta’s eyes went fond and exasperated when she spoke of how much Steve loved flying. How Sameer would smile when he told her stories of Steve Trevor, Flying Ace, from before he became a spy. On those days, could tell herself it felt fitting that was where he should remain. If he had to be lost to her, let him be scattered across the sky he so loved. 

But on many days, it nagged at her that no one had given him funeral rites, that  _ she  _ had not been able to prepare his body for the afterlife. 

And the loss of him always ached, a wound that never fully closed so it could never fully healed. 

On those days, Diana wished for more than the crumbling copy of the photograph Etta had given her  —  of Steve looking boyish and pleased beside his plane  —  and the watch that looked out of place on her wrist. She hated that they had been unable to track down the photographer from Veld, desperately wanted that photo plate, with its evidence that she had known Steve and he had known her. That they had fought together.  

It felt so intangible sometimes, even with the heaviness of his father’s watch on her wrist. They had known each other for so short a time. It felt impossible that his absence could leave such a lasting hole.

Diana missed him. She found herself turning to look for him, especially when some element of Man’s world confused or vexed her. Etta, Sameer and Charlie stepped in to explain when she needed, and Napi understood in a way no one else could, but she still felt herself turning and reaching for Steve long after he was lost to her.

She carried the grief with her, a bruise on her heart, but did not stop. Diana lived on, she fought on. To not do so was unfitting of an Amazon and would have disgraced Steve’s sacrifice. He had believed she could save the world. He had gone to his death believing it.

If she stopped trying, if she dishonoured that belief, then Diana thought he would be truly lost to her, no matter how close she clutched the memory of him.

She kept his photo  — younger than she had ever known him and with an uncomplicated happiness that he had long since lost when they met  — close to her heart. The watch she wore  — out of place  — around her wrist. She did her best to honour his memory.

She never expected to meet him again unless her uncle was kind, and reunited them in the underworld.

She was wrong.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Diana met him again, Steve never remembered her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: this is the darkest one.

 

(The first time Diana met him again, Steve never remembered her.)

Diana glanced at her watch again. They were late.

They were late and the timing was all wrong — the moon was almost full and the night was clear, they did not have the cover of darkness so crucial to these smuggling operations — she should not have been able to read her watch at all.

And Napi has refused to come with them. He had not said they should not go, only that he would not.

It had made her wary. She had tried to come alone, despite Sameer’s protests, only to find he had snuck into the hold of the boat.

At least he had the sense to come well-armed and agreed to guard the boat instead of joining her to meet their contact.

Surely, Napi would have kept Sameer from joining her if harm was to come to them. Diana could have completed this mission alone. She would not ignore the request for help.

But her contact was late.

If he did not arrive soon, she would go find him herself.

She was just about to leave when a whistle came from the other edge of the clearing. Diana made the answering call, striding into view. She had, after all, nothing to fear.

Her contact was less confident and sidled around the edge of the clearing. Diana frowned. Marc, the leader of the Maquis operating in the area, knew her well and did not take such care. Nor was this new person as adept at moving without detection as they thought they were.

Diana moved to meet them, ready to employ her whip if she needed answers.

“Etes-vous ici pour la livraison?” the man, she thought, asked, his voice muffled by the scarf obscuring his face.

Diana frowned, there was something about his voice... “Oui, tu es en retard.”

“Je suis désolé,” he said, surprisingly cheery, as he tugged the scarf free. “Marc, ah, découvrit des papiers qu'il pensait susceptibles de vous intéresser. Pour de Gaulle.”

He continued to talk for a moment but Diana heard nothing more. Her ears seemed to ring, as they had on the airfield in Belgium, the last time she had seen Steve. It was not that far from that clearing and she seemed to have gone back in time.

Steve stood in front of her.

Diana thought her heart might stop. She thought it might break.

She thought it was a trick and closed her eyes tightly for a moment, her heart pounding, but when she opened them he was still there, frowning, and looking suddenly wary.

“Ah, je suis désolé,” Steve — it could not be Steve — said. “Marc, ah, he said you speak French?”

His stance was changing, hand positioned for an easy grab at the gun Diana had spotted under his jacket from across the clearing. He swallowed, obviously nervous.

He was far less subtle at it than _her_ Steve had ever been.

Diana snapped out of it. For a split second, it was if she saw double. Steve as he had been, running towards the plane on the airfield, and the man standing before her.

Then her vision cleared and she saw just the man before her.

But that wasn’t right.

It was still obviously, painfully, Steve. Diana knew it. She was as sure of it as she had ever been of anything, though she did not know how it had come to be.

But she could hardly call him a man.

He was barely more than a boy.

A boy who was going to try to shoot her because he thought she was a Nazi.

“I can speak French,” Diana replied. She saw him relax a little — her accent was clearly not German. “I was not expecting Marc to send someone so young on such a mission.”

Steve bristled immediately and said, as haughtily has he could muster: “J’ai dix-sept ans!”

They were hiding in a clearing because if they were found the Nazis would try to kill them and the people they were trying to smuggle to safety. Otherwise, Diana might have laughed.

She raised an eyebrow at him instead.

Steve looked at her steadily, which was no mean feat for someone who did not know her — and he clearly did not.

“I am nearly seventeen,” he amended, and scowled at his impulse to tell the truth. “Are we going? You said I was late.”

“Yes, we have to move quickly,” Diana agreed. Her heart still felt as if it were in her throat, but there were other, more important tasks for tonight. “Where are they?”

“I will show you,” Steve said.

For a moment he looked at her and Diana thought he was going to take her hand and lead her on that way. It seemed like the impulse had seized Steve as well. He did not flush — Diana’s heart felt heavy at the thought that he had already trained himself not to — but took a hasty, clumsy step away from her and jerked his head back to the left.

“This way,” he said.

He led her to an abandoned farm house. Marc, who Diana was relieved to see, stepped out from the ruins of the barn.

He was limping and there were bloodstains on his jacket.

“I am sorry I could not meet you,” Marc said, his face pale in the moonlight. “I trust Steve guided you truly.”

He faltered and smothered a cough. Steve glanced at Diana uncertainly and then darted forward to help.

Marc waved him off. “No, we’ll miss the tide. Go. Get the others.”

Steve didn’t look entirely happy but he trudged off around the barn. Diana saw him break into a run when he thought she was out of sight.

When he was gone, she approached Marc. He let her.

“How bad is it?” Diana asked, peeling back his bloody jacket.

Marc winced but smiled. There was no blood on his teeth at least. “Ah, just a graze there. The leg is the problem. The bastard got a shot off at me but it’s nothing.”

His grin turned more savage. “I cannot say the same for the Boche.”

Diana checked the wound silently. It felt eerily like she had gone back in time. The slang was the same as it had been in the Great War and Steve was here like some tangible ghost.

And Marc reminded her very much of his uncle, sometimes, despite all the differences in their looks. He was pale-skinned and tall like his French father but he had his mother and uncle’s dark eyes and clever tongue.

“Sameer will not be happy to see you like this,” Diana said. Marc winced as she rebandaged his leg wound. It would be fine but he was going to have to stay off of it for longer than he liked.

“If I accompany you to the boat, maman will surely receive a full report and be cross with me. Steve will have to escort you back as well,” Marc said with a grin. Diana looked at him the same way she had when he had been a boy stealing sweets from his uncle’s kitchen. His face smoothed out and he sighed. “I’ll bleed too much if I go all the way to the shore. If I faint at Uncle Sami’s feet he will use it as an excuse to kidnap me back to England.”

He was not wrong. Sameer would be beside himself even to hear that Marc was injured. He had tried to persuade his nephew to leave for the relative safety of England many times. Marc refused to leave France.

“And how will you get back to the safe house?” Diana asked.

“When Steve returns, he will all too willingly be my crutch,” Marc said.

Every new thought and mention of Steve made Diana’s heart ache. “A strange name for a Frenchman.”

“Hm,” Marc said, distractedly. “Perhaps his mother had an affair with one of the Americans in the last war.”

Diana’s fingers did not falter as they carefully prodded the cut on Marc’s side. It was, as he said, just a scratch.

But her mind raced. That was not possible. Steve had died in 1918 and the boy was so young.

“They hung around for ages afterwards, maman’s cafe was always full of them,” Marc continued. “You remember. Uncle Sami loved them.”

Diana remembered. Sameer had written her endless letters to persuade her to visit and she had been glad when she had. Watching him hold joyful court over the group of American expats that patronized his big sister’s cafe in Paris had been a balm to her heart.

They had been so hopeful, for a time, even though they all ached with loss.

Then War had come again. Killing it’s god had not stopped it.  

That boy — Steve — he was too young, to be here, in the midst of it.

Diana stood, her back straight as if she were going into battle. But she had never been a spy and Marc had no trouble reading the look on her face. His expression hardened, even as he said, very casually: “I would say you could ask his step-father but the Boche shot him.”

Diana did not soften. “And his mother?”

Marc’s jaw clenched. “They took her away. She told him to run.”

“When?” Diana asked.

“A year ago? Perhaps a year and a half?” Marc told her. “We tried to refuse him, at first. There was no where else for him to go and every time we tried to smuggle him out of the country he would refuse.”

He looked away and sighed. “I won’t lie and say he hasn’t been an asset but if you want to try to persuade him to leave, I wish you luck.”

Diana did not point out that there was no man alive who could stop her if she decided to pick Steve up and carrying him somewhere safe — and safer than England, as far from the war as possible. She was the daughter of Zeus. No mortal could stop her.

She could have done the same to Marc, who would not thank her for it anymore than she suspected Steve would. No matter that to lose his nephew would break Sameer’s heart.

But Diana was not that type of god. She was not her brother. People were entitled to their own choices, no matter how much it made her ache.

“Then how would you get yourself to safety?” Diana asked.

“I will manage as I always do,” Marc replied.

Diana knew exactly how Sameer would react to that.

“You are more convincing when you have not been shot,” Diana told him.

“Ah, but what I got in exchange was worth it,” Marc said. He pulled a packet of papers out of the inner pocket of his jacket. Diana noticed they were pristine. It would have taken effort to keep his blood from getting on them.

“Troop positions and planned movements,” Marc said. “I imagine your friend Etta will find them useful.”

There was a whistle from some distance behind them. Marc smiled faintly: “He is more diligent about covering our tracks than most of my men. And he understands German. He has been an excellent spy for us but if you can get him onto that boat with the rest of them...”

It made Diana wonder, even as she shook Marc’s hand. “Be well.”

Less than ten minutes had passed since Steve had stepped out of her sight but as soon as Diana caught sight of him again — distrustful and defiant — everything became more difficult. It was like a hand had caught hold of her heart and started to squeeze.

Marc was a grown man. He had a right to his choices. Steve, this version of Steve, was just a boy. She need not be a god to force him onto the boat and keep him there. If Charlie had come instead of her and come to the same conclusion, he and Sameer may just have done so. If Napi had come...

But Napi, who had guided refugees through two world wars and never refused such a mission before, had refused this one.

Steve took another step forward, out of the cover provided by the small pocket of trees at the edge of the property. He looked back, speaking quietly and he gestured back at the trees, coaxing the others forward.

Diana had not expected him to be alone. She was there for a reason.

She has not expected there to be so many of them though. Two British airmen, yes, but this was not a few refugees...these were whole families, from grandmothers to babes in arms.

The boy who had been her Steve, once, looked at her, chagrined but hopeful. “There is enough room for them, yes?”

He stepped closer so they wouldn’t hear, speaking urgently. “Their hiding spot was betrayed but I overheard their neighbour speaking to the Germans and warned them. Monsieur Moreau does not know but they can’t stay here any longer. Please, will the boat be big enough?”

Diana wanted to hug him. She wanted to weep.

But he did not know her. She put a hand on his shoulder instead, squeezed, and smiled at him.

“There is room,” she told him and watched as his face lit up with still boyish delight. “But we must hurry.”

They made it back to the boat without incident. Sameer looked momentarily dismayed at the number of people but lowered the gangway into the shallow water and quickly began ushering them on board.

He went grey, as if he had seen a ghost, when Steve stepped forward to help an old woman climb onto the boat.

Diana grabbed Sameer by the front of his shirt and dragged him behind the cabin before he could speak.

“That—Diana, he looks just like—” Sameer stammered to her.

For one selfish moment, it comforted Diana that she was not the only one to see it. “I know.”

“Did he have a son?” Sameer asked. “Etta would have known if—”

“He is sixteen,” Diana told him. There was a lump in her throat. There always was when she spoke of Steve. “Steve died twenty-six years ago.”

“Did he have family in France?” Sameer asked, bewildered, as if he wouldn’t have known.

Diana shook her head. Etta had told her everything she had known about Steve, after.

“His only sister died when they were children,” Diana told him. “You know this, Sameer.”

“I don’t understand,” Sameer said. “How can this be?”

“Marc says his name is Steve too,” Diana said quietly.

Sameer went completely still. “Diana, I know he looks like our Steve but you can’t think...”

Diana shook her head. “I do not need to think. It’s...it’s Steve. I do not know how but I know it is him.”

“Diana—”

“But he does not know,” Diana continued. “And we will not force that knowledge on him.”

Sameer swallowed. Diana could tell he did not want to believe her. But Sameer had seen her defeat Ares, had seen her do a thousand things beyond the means of any human.

And before that, he had believed Steve’s tale of crash landing on Themyscira.

“Ask Napi why he would not come on this mission,” Diana told him.

Sameer frowned. “Diana, you...”

“I am staying,” she said, looking at him steadily. “You must know that.”

“Of course you are, just...” Sameer said. He looked older than his years and tired. “Can’t we bring him with us?”

“That is what I’m going to try to convince him to do,” Diana said.

Sameer sighed. To Diana’s surprise he stepped forward and took her hands in his.

“I will be back in three weeks,” Sameer said. “If you’re sure about this, take care of him. And yourself.”

Diana kissed his cheek. She pulled Marc’s packet out of her pocket and handed it to him. “From Marc. See that it gets to Etta.”

“Is he all right?” Sameer frowned, looking around as if just realizing Marc was not there.

“He will be,” Diana promised. “I’ll make sure of it!”

She jumped into the muck beside where Steve was passing the last small suitcase up to one of the young women on board. He was scowling. It did nothing to hide his worry.

“They're _stuck_. You came too far ashore,” he accused. “We have to go back and get help to push them out. The Germans will patrol here in an hour. There’s not enough time—”

Diana ignored him. She looked up to Sameer. He had secured everyone below deck. He blew her a kiss.

It almost made Diana smile as she went to the bow of the boat and lifted it from where it was mired in the mud. She waded our further, far enough to turn the boat around, back towards England, and then she _pushed._

It would get Sameer a good distance away before he had to turn the motor on.

Steve’s blue eyes were very shocked and very wide when she turned back to him, the boat disappearing into the distance. His mouth has fallen open in surprise.

“We should get back to Marc,” Diana said, walking back to Steve. She clasped him on the shoulder, propelling him forward gently. “He needs our help.”

—

In three weeks, Diana convinced Steve to come to England with her.

In the years since her Steve’s death, their friends had taught her many things. Napi taught her how to hide what she was. Sameer and Etta taught her to go unnoticed, when to be seen, and how to gather as much information as possible no matter what she was doing. Charlie attempted to teach her how to hold her liquor and then how to appear much drunker than she was when they figured out alcohol had no effect on her.

She used all of these skills to blend in with the Maquis.

Marc’s assurance that she was an operator from England, temporarily there to assist them, went a long way in their acceptance of her. As did her assistance on their raids, though she was carefully to only let Marc and Steve see her deploy even a fraction of her strength and power.    

Marc had already known. And Steve...

Diana was not used to hiding such things from Steve, even if he was not her Steve. She had not shown him to manipulate him but there was no doubt that the shared secret between them went a long way in winning him over and binding them closer.

But it also helped that Steve...Steve was very lonely. Most of the partisans were older than him, and those that were not were often there with their fathers. They weren’t unkind — Marc would not have tolerated that — but Steve was alone in the world and he knew it. He was very good at hiding it, good at putting up a facade, but he was wary and rarely relaxed his guard around his comrades.

He was well aware at how quickly everything could be snatched away.

(Diana thought of her Steve with a pang. He had hidden his own traumas all too well. His worries and fears were only expressed under the influence of the Lasso of Hestia or...at the end of it all, when he was handing her all the hopes he had left and saying goodbye.)

But Diana paid attention to him. Diana listened to him and spent time with him and gave him a secret to keep.

Steve resisted for two days and, admirably, until Marc made it clear to him that he also knew Diana’s secret and that she was absolutely to be trusted.

Then his wariness melted into awe.

It made Diana angry because it was _wrong_ that the world had been so cruel to him that a few small kindnesses inspired such devotion.

It made her furious when Steve’s guard dropped and he began to haltingly tell her of what he had lost, what he had seen. Diana was not vengeful but allowing such wrongs to go unpunished felt anathema to her very being, as had many things in this war and the last.

It made her uncomfortable because it became very clear to her very quickly that Steve had a crush on her.

And for all that he sometimes reminded her so much of her Steve it broke her heart, she was well aware of how _young_ he was, and how painfully fast he had had to grow up.

Diana would fiercely protect whatever slivers of childishness he had left.

It was surprisingly easy to deflect _that_ kind of blushing attention from him. Despite everything, Steve seemed to be at an age where he had more crushes in a day than warm meals.

There was Suzette, the group’s sharpshooter. And Marie, who pretended she was full so she could give him extra rations. And there was Ameline, only two years his senior, who had seen her parents shot the way Steve had seen his step-father killed. Steve was particularly smitten with her — she was skilled at luring Nazis into the woods only to kill them and sometimes she let Steve help.

Diana had also noticed Steve also had a boyish infatuation with Marc. Diana could not quite tell if it was hero worship or romantic. She had learned not to point such things out.

They were both aware that Steve would have done anything Marc asked of him and Diana could see Marc struggled not to abuse it because Steve, even at this young age, was a _good_ spy. He was charming and intelligent and thought quickly on his feet. The rations they were all on meant he was thinner than he should have been and, though he was growing, he could still squeeze into spaces a grown man could not.

And as far as the Germans were concerned, he also had no real identity. Using his own papers would have been a death sentence so he had burned him, everything Steve used now was forged.   

He was not quite as good as Marc himself or some of the women with the group, but he was better than most of the men.  

Plus, he knew German.

Diana wondered about that.

She asked Steve, once, where he had learned it. He had shrugged and quickly changed the subject. That was understandable. Despite it being a useful skill, anything German was suspect with the Maquis.

But Diana asked Marc as well.

“He told me he’s always known it,” Marc told her. “From what I’ve found out, neither of his parents spoke German. Or English. He cannot explain it.”

“Another might have been suspicious,” Marc said, his seriousness belayed by his smile. “But I grew up in a family that absorbs languages like water. It hardly seemed strange to me.”

From what Diana could tell, though, Steve did not pick up other languages the way Sameer’s family did.

Only German and English.

The languages her Steve had spoken fluently.   

Steve did not remember the life he had lived before, even at his most vulnerable moments, he never even hinted at it.

But it seemed that some things leaked through.

Part of Diana wished that those parts of Steve were what convinced him to come to England with her and maybe they were, in some way. Steve was loyal, to his friends, to his cause, and willing to do whatever he could when it came to fighting for what was right.

It made it easier to convince him to go to England with her when Sameer came back. Their radio operator had been killed. Someone needed to step in until the SOE could send someone new.

Marc did not hesitate to suggest Steve and Steve jumped to accept.

It was what Diana wanted but her heart sank at the smile on Steve’s face. She knew he couldn’t be officially trained and leaving the partisans in the lurch was unacceptable.

“Uncle Sameer and Etta can teach him all he needs to know,” Marc told her, when she spoke to him about it the night before they left. “I doubt there’s a General in the Free French army that knows more than Etta does.”

“She will try to convince him to stay,” Diana warned.

Marc smiled sadly and shook his head. “She won’t manage it.”

Diana did not disagree.

(After three weeks, Diana knew Steve would never leave the fight for good.)

—

Etta was their welcoming committee when they docked in England. Whatever surprise she must have felt when Steve stepped out of the past and onto the pier in front of her, she hid it well.

“My, my, you look like you could use a good cup of tea, a warm bath and hot meal,” Etta said with relentless, good-natured cheer.

She held out her arm for Steve. He looked hesitantly at Diana but stepped forward at her nod. Etta’s hand on his arm was gentle but firm as she took charge of him almost immediately.

“Have you ever had a proper English meat pie?” Etta asked him, lacing their arms together as if he were escorting her. “It’s been an age since I had one myself, what with the rationing, but Sameer, the devil, managed to scare up the ingredients for me...”

Diana hung back as she led him away. She had spotted Charlie loitering at the other end of the dock. He took a long swig from his flask as soon as Steve was out of sight, handing it to Sameer as soon as the boat was secured.

“I don’t know about this,” Charlie said, then added, in a mutter: “Aren’t there enough ghosts already haunting us with this damned war?”

“He is no ghost,” Diana said, firmly.

“And he’s too young to be Steve’s byblow,” Sameer interjected quickly as Charlie opened his mouth to suggest it. “You know this.”

Charlie shook his head. “Then you lot are seeing things that aren’t there. Steve’s dead. He’s been dead for twenty-six years. That there’s some boy that looks like him doesn’t bring him back.”

He strode away, angry. Sameer sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Sometimes, I think it is too hard for Charlie let himself have any hope any more.”

Diana watched him go. Charlie had started drinking again when the news out of Germany turned dark, as if he had known what was coming and couldn’t bear to see it. None of them had much success in helping him.

“You will keep an eye on him?” Diana asked.

“Of course,” Sameer told her. “As much as he ever lets me.”

It was not enough but Sameer had the most luck when it came to Charlie. Diana sighed. “I need to speak to Napi. He would not say anything when you asked him about Steve?”

“I could not even find him to ask,” Sameer told her. “I will ask around again but you know when he does not want to be found...”

Sameer trailed off, then snorted a laugh. He gestured to the end of the dock. “Et voila.”

Napi stood there, waiting for them.

\--

Later, Diana would remember those short weeks and think of the way Steve had been with Etta.

(“Did you know?” Diana asked. She tried to keep the accusation out of her voice but _he could have warned her._

Napi hesitated. “You know as well as I do that I have no special foresight. I was needed elsewhere.”

“Where?”

Napi gave her an inscrutable look. “That is not your concern.”)

Etta was disarming. She had gone grey and plump and wore spectacles with a little beaded string attached to the ends so she wouldn't misplace them. Somehow, despite all the shortages, she smelled like bread and ink and paper.

Diana knew exactly how crafty and dangerous she could be, had seen her use both a letter opener and a cardigan to subdue a man. Etta was as much of a spy as their Steve had ever been and she had no qualms about using every bit of manipulative skill she had to win this Steve over completely.

(For a long moment, they stared at each other, neither willing to bend.   

But there was an understanding between them and a kinship Diana felt more strongly than what she had felt for her half-brother whom she had destroyed.

They both relaxed, though sorrow still lay heavy over their shoulders.)

But in the end, Etta had no need to. Steve took to her immediately, and then even more so when he realized she could teach him all the radio codes and signals, not to mention she could take one apart and put it back together without a so much as a sniff of frustration.

Diana thought if he had not been so aware of himself, so conscious of the rest of the world, he would have begun following her around like a lost duckling.

He liked the rest of them well enough. Sameer taught him how to pick locks and pockets and how to make his charm even more lethal. They got into one bar fight together that Diana knew about and another they thought they had kept hidden. Steve was shy around Napi and Napi was reserved around Steve but when he produced a set of boy’s adventure books written in French, Steve’s smile was beaming.

Charlie...He made himself scarce around Charlie, as if he could tell how much it hurt Charlie just to look at him.

And Diana still caught him looking at her with a reverence and awe that pained her.   

Her Steve had looked at her with reverence and awe but before that, before he had believed in her or even believed what she was saying, he had looked at her like an equal. His worship had always been of a different sort.

This Steve would never look at her like that. And for all that she was one, Diana had no desire to be treated like a god.

(“If Steve’s soul returned to this world, it is not because of any allegiance to me,” Napi said, his voice gentle. “He was my friend but I had no claim to his spirit.”

Diana swallowed. “I have no foresight either. I know nothing of this. It could be my uncle’s doing but we have never even spoken — I do not even know if he survived the first battle with Ares.”

Napi shook his head. “I cannot help you with this — it is as beyond me as it is you. But it does not take foresight or divine powers to see that if his soul is tied to anyone, it is to you.”

“But he does not know that,” Diana said, her heart aching. “I think it is best not to tell him.”

“I agree,” Napi hesitated. Finally, he sighed. “And though I cannot see the future, I worry for that boy’s. Worse things will come out of this war than we yet know.”)

There was something fragile and sweet about the way he leaned into Etta when he thought there was no one to see.

(“He misses his mother,” Etta told her. “Poor lad. That’s what he wants more than anything.”

“I know,” Diana replied.

Themyscira was lost to her; her mother was lost to her, forever. She was well acquainted with the longing she sometimes glimpsed on Steve’s face when he looked at Etta.)

But from nearly the moment he had arrived, every other sentence out of Steve’s mouth had been about getting back to France, about his comrades, about all the help he would be with what they were teaching him.

Diana still somehow harboured the hope that Etta might be able to convince him to stay, to let them keep him safe.

(The night before Steve left, Etta sat down grim faced next to Diana and shook her head.

“You would have to tie him up and lock him in a room to keep him here,” Etta said. “Even then he would run away the first chance he got. We would never see him again. He would think it the worst betrayal.”

Having Steve hate her would break Diana’s heart but she would do it, if that was what was best for him.

“I would not keep him here, if we were to do this,” Diana said, considering the thought, just for a moment. “I would take him somewhere safer, somewhere farther away.”

“Canada or the United States would do it,” Etta agreed. “Perhaps you could convince Napi to help.”

It was a lovely, terrible thought.

“He would be alive,” Diana said. “But it would destroy him, I think.”

“Yes,” Etta said, with a sigh, and patted Diana’s knee. “It would.”

There had never been any hope.)

—

Diana could not spend all her time with the maquisards that Steve belonged with. She tried but there were other people that needed her help, other lives only she could save.

(She had another few months with him, though they are only together for days of it. Steve beamed at her whenever she appeared, and took her thoroughly into her confidence, telling her all he had learned and done since they last saw each other, asking after Etta and Sameer and Napi, even shyly showing her the little heart he had carved for Ameline’s birthday after Ameline let him steal a kiss. He hugged Diana, fleetingly, unsurely, whenever they parted.

She kept the memory of that smile, of those brief, trusting hugs and all the newfound hope in them, pressed tight into the corners of her heart, more precious to her than anything in the world.)

She was not there when the raid went bad. It was only luck that she arrived in the aftermath.

It was chaos. Diana knew at once they thought the safe house was compromised — most of the Maquis had scattered already. Only the stragglers were left.

Marc was still there, with a bloody bandage pressed against his neck. He was too pale and he went paler when he saw her but he visibly steeled himself and tried to make his way to her. He nearly fell, clutching at his side.  

Diana’s heart sank, even as she caught and steadied him. It felt like a foreboding echo to the first time she had met Steve.

“We were ambushed and cornered in the Boucher barn,” Marc told her. “They would have slaughtered us but Steve...”

“Steve slipped out and blew up their car,” Ameline told her. The girl looked like she had been crying but her jaw was set. “He should of run away then but he didn’t to make sure we all got away. He was shot.”

“Where is he?” Diana demanded. If the Germans had him, if he was still alive...

“Marc wouldn’t leave him,” Ameline said. “That’s how _he_ got shot.”

“I’ll be fine,” Marc said. He winced and shook his head. “But moving Steve will kill him.”

“Then I will bring a doctor to him,” Diana said.

“No. If they knew about the raid, they will know of this place,” Ameline said. She glanced at Diana but Diana could see that she was already resolved — this was not her first loss. She had learned some risks were worth taking. “He has a better chance...”

“Diana,” Marc said, gripping her arm tightly. It was slippery with blood. He looked her in the eyes, his face ashen. “He was shot in the stomach. It...It’s too late for a doctor.”

A cold ball had settled in the pit of Diana’s stomach. She could not tell if it was fury or sorrow.

“I will stay with him,” Diana said.

“No!” Ameline said. She grabbed Diana’s arm as well, even tugged it, her face suddenly desperate. “We have to get away! We can’t be caught, none of us, or it will have been for nothing! It can’t be for nothing! He can’t die for nothing!”

“Ameline,” Marc said sharply, trying to pull her back.

Diana pulled her arm out of the girl’s grasp but only to cup her face in her hands. Her eyes were red and her lips trembled but she did not cry. She looked at Diana with fire and defiance in her eyes.

“They cannot harm me,” Diana told her gravely.

The girl’s face creased: “I don’t understand.”

If Diana’s heart had not felt like a boulder in her chest, she would have smiled at her. “You must help Marc. He will not make it on his own. I will stay with Steve.”

“But—”

“They cannot harm me,” Diana repeated. She let her hands drop and looked to Marc. “Where is he?”

“In the back room,” Marc told her. “Diana—”

Diana shook her head. “You must go. Now. Before they arrive.”

Steve was laid out on the table in the backroom. Diana could hear the wet rasp of his breathing before she got close enough to see that someone had rolled up a jacket and placed it under his head, that someone had run to get a bed cover to try and make him comfortable even in their haste to abandon this place.

It was already heavy with his blood.

There was sweat beading from his face, pooling at the base of his throat and wetting his hair, and she could see blood on his teeth. Diana peeled back the covering and the bandages they had hastily pressed over the wound. She had to see for herself. She made herself look.

She had to be sure. If there was any chance, any chance at all, she would pick him up and carry him back to London herself.

But it was a gut shot. She could have brought the best doctor in the world to his side and there would have been nothing to be done. Nothing short of Themyscira would save him and that was long lost to her.

It was a miracle he had lived long enough for them to return him to the safehouse.

Tears stung Diana’s eyes. She smoothed Steve’s damp hair back.

The door scraped open. Ameline stood there, silent and pale.

Diana drew herself up. “You must go. You said so yourself.”

Ameline’s mouth slanted into a frown. She strode into the room and handed Diana a box. It rattled, it’s contents nearly exhausted.

“It’s all the morphine we have left,” Ameline said, glancing at Steve.

She hesitated for a moment, then darted forward to kiss Steve’s forehead, a brief benediction, before slipping away.

Diana was left alone with Steve, this boy they had all come to love.

She checked the box. There were only two syrettes left. Not enough to grant him mercy.

Diana did not know if she would have been able to deliver that to him.

Instead, she sat on the table and lifted his head into her lap. He coughed and she wiped away the blood that dribbled from the side of his mouth. She injected him with the first dose when he whimpered in pain.

It did not do enough to ease his pain.

His eyes opened — hazy, feverish slits of blue.

“Di-Diana?” Steve murmured. His eyes roved around the room and his face creased. “M-marc? Am-am...”

“They are safe,” Diana told him. “They have gone to safety. I will stay with you.”  

“Nn-nno,” Steve breathed, his eyes widening. He looked horrified. He looked like he might try to get up. “C-cant. Pl...pl...ease.”

“They cannot harm me,” Diana said for the third time that night. She rested her hand on his forehead.  “I promise you. Do you believe me?”

Steve looked at her and Diana thought he was seeing her as clearly as he ever had. “Y-es.”

“Good,” Diana said. She smiled for him, though all the rage and pain, because she could give him that when she could give him little else.

But Steve’s face was creasing and he made a wet sound in the back of his throat, like the whine of a dying animal. “H-hur-urts. It h-hurts...”

Diana’s eyes were heavy with tears as she gave him the second syrette, not enough to end his suffering, but it seemed to ease it.

“S-s-sorry,” Steve mumbled. He fumbled with his hand, searching for hers, she thought. She took it and held it tightly. He gripped hers back weakly for a moment. His pupils were pinpricks now and his eyelids were drooping.

“Shh,” Diana soothed. “You were brave and you did so well. You saved your comrades. You can rest now.”

She smoothed his hair back with the hand that was not holding his, and wiped his tears away. Steve held her gaze for a moment more before his eyes slid shut.

He did not wake again, not even when he coughed, a pitiful, painful sound, or when his breath turned into a gurgle.

Not when Diana heard the safehouse being surrounded.

Still, she waited until he was gone.

Diana did not lose control anymore, not like she had on the airfield. When all that remained of Steve was the body he left behind, she rose, and folded his arms across his chest.

(Later, she would attend to him properly, wash and anoint his body. She would place a coin on his mouth to honour Charon and pay his passage. She would inscribe a gold tablet with a prayer to Hades, her uncle, to let his soul find rest, with a lock of her hair tucked into his hand to proclaim her favour. She would steal into Père Lachaise to see him buried, because it seemed wrong to take him from the country he fought and died for, and after the war, would see a small tomb built in his honour.

Marc would not survive the war but Ameline would. Diana sent her the location anonymously. She never knew how Steve’s grave came to be but even after she passed of old age, her children and grandchildren would keep it covered in flowers.)

Diana did not lose control anymore. She knew what the German troops gathering outside had done. She still gave them the chance to surrender.

They refused.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second time Diana met Steve again, it took time.

(The second time Diana met Steve again, it took time.)

Diana was on her way to retrieve her coat when someone took a step back and bumped into her.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, and it was all Diana could do not to freeze at the sound of _that_ voice.

Then Steve turned. He was older, with grey at his temples and peppered through his beard. There were lines Diana had never seen before on his forehead and around the corners of his lips.

For a split second, he stared at her, looking poleaxed. But he recovered quickly.

“My fault,” Steve said, smiling, a bit too disarmingly, his head tilted just slightly to the side. He had not glanced away from her for a second. “Do I know you? I feel like I know you.”

Diana did not lie to him — it was clear he did not remember her: “No, I do not believe so.”

Steve blinked and it was if a momentary spell had been broken. He cleared his throat and his smile changed. It was still charming but there was something less open and genuine about it.

“My apologies, again,” Steve said. “I’m Steve. Steve Trevor and I swear that wasn’t a line.”

“Diana Prince,” Diana said, introducing herself to the man who had once been the love of her life, once been a boy who broke her heart. “I did not think it was.”

“Oh. Good,” Steve said. There was a beat of awkward hesitation from him. “Are you leaving? It wasn’t a line but I would be happy to get you a drink. For bumping in to you.”

He seemed to catch himself again and, though he did not move, it was as if he had taken a step back. “Sorry, I don’t mean to—"

“Yes,” Diana said directly. “You can get me a glass of wine.”

Steve did not blush. Diana wondered how many lifetimes he had had to train himself out of that. His smile was smaller and a little sheepish but felt truer. “White or red?”

“White,” Diana told him, in the hopes that he would avoid red himself. She did not care for the colour of it in his mouth.

Steve brought back two glasses. He put his on the cocktail table in front of them without drinking from it. “Are you new to DC?”

“It has been sometime since I have been here,” Diana said.

“You’re not government,” Steve said, then seemed to realize he had said it too surely. “Ah. I mean, I haven’t seen you at any of the functions I’ve attended.”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m not. I have an interest in art. You work in the government?”

“At State,” Steve said.

His face was carefully blank and he offered nothing more. Diana was somehow surprised by that. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Sure, well enough. It’s different,” Steve said, completely bland. “You said you had an interest in art?”

“Yes, although this exhibit is admittedly not my area of expertise,” Diana told him. “You were a military man?”

Steve’s posture stiffened just slightly. If she had not been watching him so closely and had not known him before — twin aches that she carried with her every day — Diana may not have noticed it.

“You have that look,” Diana said. She tried to be gentle about it. She was not sure she was. He still looked wary.  “If your hands were behind your back you would be standing at ease.”

It was true and it made him blink, then relax just a little. He smiled, not much and not...wholly genuine but edging toward it again.

“I was with the 101st Airborne. In Vietnam,” Steve said shortly. He tried, again, to change the subject: “What’s your area of expertise?”

“Greek antiquities,” Diana said.

His eyebrows raised in surprise and his mouth twitched into a wry smile. Diana thought it might be the first truly genuine expression she had seen from him since he first bumped in to her.

“You understated it when you said this wasn’t your ‘area of expertise,’” Steve said, good-naturedly. “Can I ask what you think of the exhibit?”

The exhibit was from a new mixed-media artist and Diana had only attended because she had been told a collector might be there who was also interested in WWI era artifacts, particularly photographs. He had been there but as friendly and accommodating as he had been, all he could give her were new leads to pursue, not what she sought.

The exhibit art itself was...disquieting. It was meant to be, from what Diana had learned of the artist.

“I believe in art for art’s sake, whether it is my specialty or not,” Diana said. “It is always worth considering new forms and perspectives.”

“That’s a diplomatic answer,” Steve observed.   

“But also a true one,” Diana said. “What brought you here tonight? Is this your preference or are you here for work?”

Diana could not imagine it would be. The pieces were...violent and intense. Steve always seemed to experience war in his lifetimes but he also despised it.

Still, she was surprised to see him grimace, even if it was slightly. He had been so reserved so far.

“Neither,” he said. “I know the artist. He knows I wouldn’t choose this work to hang over my mantle but I served with him so...”

Steve shrugged: “Speaking of the devil, I should go say hello. Thank you for letting me get you a drink.”

Diana was surprised by the abruptness of it, even as Steve hesitated another moment. He clearly could not decide whether he wanted to extricate himself or stay.

Diana thought he also did not want to seem rude.

“Unless, would you like an introduction?” he asked, finally.

But she could tell he was uncomfortable. Diana was not sure why and it left a cold, tight feeling in her chest. She smiled for him, thinking of the man he had been and the boy he had been, both of whom she had lost.

Diana could not help but be kind to this man in their memory.

“No, thank you. I should go,” Diana said. She would not push him but she could not simply let him walk out of her life. She pulled her card out of her clutch and handed it to him. “If you decide antiquities are more your preference, arranging for something to hang over your mantle would be difficult but I do know some people at the Smithsonian. I would be happy to arrange a tour.”

“Thanks,” Steve said, taking it gingerly.

There was that reluctance again and something about his face and bearing that made Diana think, just for a moment, that he was going to kiss her hand or cheek in farewell. He did not blush but she was sure the same impulse occurred to him before he nodded, turned, and walked away with a gait just short of a military march.

Diana did not know what to make of it.

“Can I take those miss?” a waiter asked at her elbow. Diana turned to tell him yes but he was already taking a step back. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you weren’t finished.”

Diana blinked. She was not fond of alcohol but drinking it it did not affect her and she had learned refusing often drew unwanted attention. She usually took a glass and, if she could not manage to ditch it subtly, paced her consumption rate to the person with whom she was drinking.

Both glasses were still full. Steve hadn’t had a drop.

\--

Steve did not take her up on her offer.

Diana did not see him for another three weeks.

Or rather, he did not approach her for three weeks after their first meeting.

Diana could sense him on the periphery of her life. She did not think it was intentional, not at first. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of overlap in the places they were spending their time, particularly since neither their reasons for being in Washington — Steve’s job with the State Department and Diana’s research for the Smithsonian, and her other, personal research — nor their sparse social circles had much overlap.

It was if something was drawing them together.

Diana did not wish to be patient. She had only had days with her Steve, the first time they had met; the second time they had known each other for handful of months but had only gotten to spend a few short weeks together.

It never seemed like they were granted enough time.

She had decided to approach him when his behaviour shifted. His presence at the very edges of her life became more intentional and though he never approached her, never came close enough for her to approach him without an abundance of effort, he seemed to be...more suspicious, less friendly.

It made Diana sad. She craved knowing him and made discreet inquiries that, despite her connections, produced slim, heavily-redacted files with pages obviously missing.

Diana was not good at being patient but she forced herself to be. She thought if she approached him first, she might lose him altogether.

But her resolve only held so long. After nearly a month of waiting, she was ready to throw that uncharacteristic caution to the wind.

And then Steve did it himself.

They were in the same coffee shop. Diana had finished her breakfast and was lingering with her coffee and the paper when Steve walked in, dressed more casually than she had seen him in this lifetime in jeans and a sweater. Diana did not have to look up, she could tell the moment he walked into the shop, the moment he noticed she was there.

She expected him to get his coffee, turn on his heel and leave. Or perhaps just turn on his heel and leave. 

This time, she thought, she would go after him. 

Instead, Steve sat down across the table from her and asked, bluntly: “Are you a spy?”

Diana wanted to laugh but the look on his face was entirely serious. Perhaps one day she could tell him...

“No,” she answered, instead. He did not look satisfied, like he wanted to believe her but couldn’t. “I am not a spy, Steve Trevor. But surely that is what a spy would say?”

He made a face. Diana could not help it; she giggled. Steve made an even more displeased face.

Diana took pity on him. “What could I say that would convince you? You will mistrust _any_ answer.”

This time, his face was unsatisfied but still managed to convey his begrudging agreement. “I can’t imagine a spy would be interested in a low level State department official who won’t have a job by next year _anyway._ ”

There was such casual defeat in his voice it took her aback.

She could not think of what to say but she did not want him to leave. It took her a moment to figure out why he would say he would not have a job next year.

“You do not think Carter will win re-election?” Diana asked, without really thinking about it.

It was, she would admit, something a spy might ask of someone working in government.

Steve face was guarded but he shrugged. “I don’t always agree with him but President Carter is a good man. The best of men. I still can’t believe he got elected once. Twice would be a miracle.”

Diana understood at once that Steve had long since given up on believing in miracles.

“You are not a career diplomat then?” Diana asked.

Steve’s lips twitched. It was nearly a smile. “I’m not a diplomat at all.”

“I confess to being unsure of what exactly it is you do,” Diana told him. She had made discreet inquiries into that too but none of her sources had given her a satisfactory answer. Something to do with civilian aid operations but she couldn't picture him as just a paper pusher.

“Nothing of much importance,” he said.

He looked at her, his blue eyes just as she remembered, only she had never seen quite the sheepish, almost embarrassed expression in them as he said: “Thanks for not immediately saying I’m paranoid.”

Diana’s heart ached for him. She wanted to take his hand. She wanted to ask him a million questions, as many as when she had been trying to understand Man’s world.

But she could tell if she did, he would close down.

What had happened to her Steve?

“I have seen too much of the world for that,” Diana told him carefully.

Her heart sank at the look of agreement and tired acceptance on his face.

—

It felt inevitable and was unsatisfying when they fell into bed together.

It was not that Steve was an unsatisfying lover — he was, unusually so given her experiences with men of his age and time.

(She had pursued relationships with women more frequently because of those unsatisfactory experiences.)

He went out of his way to please her even when his own body did not...respond entirely as he wished it to. It was not a frequent occurrence but it happened more than once. It seemed during those instances he was even more invested in her pleasure.

(He never wanted to talk about those incidents and when Diana tried, he went so quiet and looked so deeply ashamed she could not bring herself to push him.

There were too many things where his response was silence and shutting down.)

But Steve would never stay the night. He would always leave before he fell asleep, no matter how comfortable or drowsy he seemed. No matter how often Diana invited him to stay.

(She followed him only once. She did not think he was doing anything she would disapprove of, she only wished to know why and he would not give her a clear answer.

He went home to his small apartment and she watched through the break in his curtains as he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands for a very long time.

She did not follow him again.)

It was maddening. For all that he had been a spy, _her_ Steve had been very open with her. As a boy, despite his initial wariness, he had been all too eager and enthusiastic among the people he trusted, and he had trusted her quickly.

This Steve was not the same.   

If she was being charitable, she would call him reserved. If she was not, she would say he was completely closed off and, despite not initially describing him as such, he did have bouts of paranoia.

But it was his despondence that felt like the greatest change.

 _Her_ Steve had not been without despair. He been weary with the horrors he had seen and prone to pessimism when the lasso revealed the depths of his heart but there had still been such a burning desire to do good in him, and a deep seated belief that though mankind could and did do evil things, they could — he could — do good as well.

She saw none of that in the man before her. He just seemed weary and demoralized.

Diana tried not to think about how much he reminded her of Charlie.

They were not...exactly the same. Charlie had tried to cloak his despair in gross exaggeration. At his worst, he bragged, he told horrible stories, he drank, he put others down. When it broke free, it did so loudly.

With Steve, this Steve, there was silence. There was a quiet, heartbreaking acceptance. He took drinks but did not drink them, worked for a man he believed in but could see no hope for, and there was a distance to him that Diana did not think anyone had breached in a long time.

She did not know what with such passive hopelessness.

(They has lost Charlie to his despair in the end. He had drunk himself to death after the losing his daughter to a V-2 Rocket late in the Second World War.)

—

Steve left for a week. He seemed surprised when Diana asked him about it, as he was dressing to leave, as he always did. He never failed to be surprised when she wanted to know personal things about him.

(He liked listening to her stories. They were one of the few things that made him genuinely smile.

She hated that she had to lie to him, to pretend that she had grown up on a Greek island instead of Themyscira, to speak of Etta as if she had not been as important to Steve as she was to Diana.)

“I’m visiting my goddaughter,” Steve said shortly, something guarded and fragile in his eyes. “It’s her birthday this week.”

Diana smiled. She had overheard Steve speaking to Sandy or her mother, Maya, once or twice on the phone. He almost sounded happy, when he was speaking to them.

“What did you get her?” Diana asked him.

Steve paused, looking unsure but also pleased. It made Diana’s heart pang. It had caught him off guard that she cared but he _wanted_ to share it with someone.

“She’s really into horses right now,” Steve said. “I found a stable close enough to her house. I checked with her mum and we’re going to take a day trip with her to meet the real thing.”

He looked so sheepish about it, as if he expected her to dismiss it. She would have been offended at his judgement of her character if she did not know he expected that of everyone.

It was a sweet present on its own but Steve cared about it so much, so clearly wanted it to go well. Diana could read how he deeply he felt about it in a way that she normally couldn't, not with this Steve, who kept so much to himself.

“That is a wonderful idea,” Diana told him, she brushed her fingers over his cheek, surprised that he let her. “She will love it.”

Steve gave her a brief, brilliant flash of his smile: “Let’s hope so.”

He bent closer to kiss her cheek, so quickly she barely felt it, before getting up and leaving the apartment.

That was not something he had done before.

For a moment, Diana felt hopeful for him.

He called when he arrived. She had not been expecting it but it was a pleasant surprise. He sounded less tense than she had ever heard him, and promised, absently, that he would call her before they left for the birthday trip.

He never called back.

A week went by. Diana heard nothing.

She called him a few days after she knew he had planned to return but his number had been disconnected. It froze her heart with fear — she had already lost him twice. At least then, at least those times, she knew how.

She went to his apartment. He wasn’t there but it was clearly still his. It was immaculately clean but that was normal for this Steve. There were clear signs that he was still living there.

Diana did not understand. She checked in with her contacts. He was still going to work. He still, they said, seemed fine.

But he did not call. He did not stop by. Diana, though she hated to admit it, spent more time than usual in the coffee shops, parks and restaurants they had both frequented even before they began sleeping with each other.

Steve seemed to have changed his habits completely.

Another week went by. Then a month.

Steve had vanished from her life as if he had never been there to begin with.

Diana did not go back to his apartment after she was sure Steve was not in danger. It hurt and she did not understand but it was his choice, even if his steps to avoid her seemed drastic if he simply lost interest in her.

Diana...did not think that was quite it. There was something else. Something had scared him. 

(She thought of Charlie, near the end, when he refused to see her, refused to see anyone.

Sameer thought he was trying to punish himself. They had tried. They had tried and tried but even when he had been in hospital and they had gone to see him, they had been refused at the door.

Charlie had died alone.)

—

Nearly two months after Steve disappeared from her life, someone knocked on Diana’s door at three in the morning. She had just come in. She hadn't even taken off her armour yet. She had foiled an assassination attempt on Thurgood Marshall before they could get close enough for even him to be aware of it.

She threw a robe on over her armour. She was at the door when she remembered her tiara and carefully stashed it in the front hall closet before answering it, just as Steve was raising his hand to knock again.

He looked...terrible. More disheveled than Diana had ever seen him. There were dark smudges under his eyes and he was very pale.

There was an intensity in his eyes that she had never seen before, not in all the times she had known him. The desperation of someone who did not know what to do.

“Why am I dreaming about you?” Steve asked, with no further preamble.

Diana had not been expecting that. It brought her up short for a moment. “Steve—”

“You’re a woman men would dream about, of course you are, but that’s not...” Steve continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. Diana was not sure he had heard her, even though he was looking right at her. She was not sure he  _saw_ her. “ _I would have wanted that._ It’s not that. We’re in a fucking trench and you — you’re storming No Man’s Land and there’s a town and...and gas but I know what Agent Orange looked like, I know what it did, this is different and I can’t...I know the difference between a nightmare and a memory, a...a flashback, okay? This was real. I can tell. _I can tell._ ”

Diana’s heart leapt at that thought Steve might be _remembering_. She had not thought that was possible, had thought only she would ever know those moments after her Steve was gone. But the rest of his words...They were not a surprise, not entirely, but it still made her ache to hear them and his voice, the look on his face, was so frantic.

“Steve,” she said again, and tried to take his arm. His grip on the door frame only tightened until his knuckles were white. He still did not hear her.

“I’m not,” Steve struggled with the word, “crazy. I passed the psych eval when I _took this job._ I know what my nightmares are. I’m handling it. _Why am I dreaming of another war?”_

“Steve!” Diana all but shouted. He finally _stopped_ and really looked at her.

Diana opened her robe. Steve stared at her armour. He went completely still. Diana had not realized there was any colour left in his face until the rest of it drained away.

She reached for him because she thought he might faint.

His eyes snapped back to her face. He was breathing heavily.

“I’m going to be sick,” he told her, with an eerie sort of calm.

Diana stepped back swiftly to let him in. He did not make it to her bathroom. Instead, he threw up into her kitchen sink, his whole body shaking.

Diana reached out to touch his back, to do something to comfort him. Steve shook his head almost violently.

“No, don’t,” he gasped, between gags, and then, in a smaller voice: “Please. I can’t...”

Diana took a step back, though her hands ached to touch him. She could only watch as the heaving stopped. She saw Steve try to gather himself together and fail. He wiped his mouth, then bent to rinse it. He washed his hands, then gripped the counter as tightly as he had gripped the door frame, as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.

“Steve,” Diana told him, trying to keep her voice gentle. His head twitched towards her. “You should sit down.”

“Yeah, probably,” Steve said. His mouth twisted and he hung his head. “I don’t...trust myself yet.”

Diana stepped forward and tentatively took his arm. This time he let her. He let her lead him into the living room so he could sit down heavily on the couch. The lamplight in the room made him wince and he put his head in his hands as if it ached but when Diana went to turn it off, he stopped her.

“No,” he said. “It’s better with the light on.”

Diana wanted to hold him but could tell from the way his back was hunched defensively that it would not be welcome. She chanced putting a hand on his knee. He did not object.

After some time he said, in that too-calm voice again: “We were in some kind of cave the first time I saw you in that.”

Diana’s throat felt tight. “Yes.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” his voice numb.

“This was not the first time we met,” Diana said, trying to be gentle. “But...for you, it was in another lifetime. I think you are remembering the first lifetime where we met.”

Steve stared at her. He looked...he looked terrible, stripped bear and left defenseless. She reached out to touch his face and Steve let her, he did not even blink.

Before tonight, Diana had not thought he could remember. She had not thought to worry about what remembering could do to him.

“Diana,” he sighed, caught between yearning and disbelief. Diana wished she could have savoured the way her name sat in his mouth but all she could see were the tremors in his hands and the bruises under his eyes.

He was in no shape for this conversation. Diana was not even sure he was fit to comprehend it.

“Steve. When was the last time you slept?” She asked.

Steve blinked in surprise. “Uh. I tried tonight but...”

He shrugged and looked away. “Two days before that.”

Diana took his hands in hers. “I think you should rest before we continue this conversation.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He nodded but...his movements spoke of defeat and hurt as he pulled away from her. He swallowed twice and forced one of those terrible half-smiles that he did not mean. “I guess...I guess I’ll call you in the morning then. Set something up.”

“Steve,” Diana said again, as if repeating his name would keep him her with her, keep him focussed. “You can stay here.”

“No, I can’t,” Steve said. The response sounded...automatic.

Diana took his hand back into hers. “Why not?”

Steve hesitated. Diana could tell he did not want to tell her, that making himself vulnerable, even in the smallest degrees, cost him dearly.

“I don’t sleep well,” he said, finally. He wouldn’t meet her eyes but he didn’t pull away from her again. “I...thrash. I can’t...risk it.”

Diana considered that. No matter what his strength was when caught in nightmares, Steve could not hurt her physically. She did not think that saying so would be a balm to him.

“I have a guest room,” Diana offered.

Steve wavered. Diana could see exhaustion beating upon him like waves, literally bending his back with weariness.

“I make...noises sometimes. I’ll keep you up,” Steve warned.

“I can go many days without sleep,” Diana informed him. Steve looked flummoxed. “I will explain when you have rested. I promise it will be all right, Steve.”

Steve sighed. He scrubbed his free hand over his eyes and pushed it into his hair, tugging slightly, as if trying to force himself to focus. “I don’t know why I trust you like this.”

Diana squeezed his hand. “I am glad you do.”

“I’m not sure I am,” Steve said honestly, in a flat, exhausted tone.

That hurt, though Diana could not find it in herself to blame him for it. She did not think Steve remembered how to trust people. His trust in her must not have felt entirely of his own will.

“I will not be offended if you don’t stay,” Diana told him. “I will still explain, come morning, if you choose to go home and rest. But, for many reasons, you will always be welcome in my home.”

Steve still hesitated another moment before he nodded, giving in. It was what she wanted and what he needed, still, it felt hollow.

She did not want this, her, to be something that seemed to cost him so much.

\--

Steve slept poorly in her guest room. He closed the door behind him and Diana respected the barrier he choose to put up. But she could not sleep and though he was not loud, he was not silent in his sleep. She could hear him moving, thrashing as he said he would, and murmuring indistinct, urgent words.

Even if he had let her, Diana did not know how she would have soothed his distress. She wished she knew more of what had happened to shape the man he had become.

She considered calling Etta. She had not mentioned Steve to her yet. He had seemed so...different and Etta was getting on in years. If he was going to disappear from their lives by choice, she thought it might be best not to tell her. Or Sameer, who had been particularly hurt by Charlie cutting them out of his life.

Diana dearly wished she could speak to Napi about it. But she had not heard from him in years.

(He had told her, at their last meeting, that they would meet again. He had not said _when_.

Diana missed him.)

Steve did not sleep much past dawn.

(Diana wondered when the last time he had well and truly rested was.)

He looked marginally better than he had the night before. He was calmer but his hair was mussed, his expression unsure, and he looked more vulnerable in his undershirt and slacks from the previous night than he ever had when he had been naked before her.

Diana had left her armour out on the table. Last night, it had seemed to spark something. It did this morning too. He stopped, when he saw it, and came forward as if enthralled. He reached out and traced a reverent finger over one of her gauntlets.

“You can block bullets with these,” Steve said, in a quiet, calm voice.

 _I let you take them off me, once,_ Diana thought and for a moment, Diana could almost feel the touch of her Steve’s lips against the skin of her wrists. “Yes.”

Steve blinked and looked at her as if remembering where they were. “I don’t...remember everything, I don’t think. I don’t know where we were. Or when.”

“You first saw it in London. In 1918,” Diana told him. “The first time we met.”

“The first time,” Steve echoed. “There’s been more than once before this?”

“This is the third time we have met,” Diana said. “You were very young, the second time. It was in France, during the Second World War.”

“I don’t remember that,” Steve told her. He shook his head, his mouth twisting unpleasantly. “Seems I can’t escape wars, huh?”

Diana felt the weight of him, as a boy, dying in her arms. “You were very brave.”

“Don’t,” Steve said, sharply.

And Diana was furious — _how dare he? —_  until she looked at him. He had gone rigid again but the look in his eyes was no longer distant. Diana could not read the emotion in them, not entirely, but she saw shame, and embarrassed pride, and such sorrow and anger and hurt.

Steve was not wrong, when he said he could not seem to escape war. Diana had only ever known him during wartime before. This was the first time she had met him during peacetime.

He had lived through his war without her, this time.

Something in Steve’s gaze shifted as he looked at her. It grew...softer. He forced his posture to relax.

“What about you?” he asked, his voice kinder. “You’re something more than human, right?”

“I am Diana of Themyscira,” Diana told him. “Daughter of Queen Hippolyta and Zeus.”

“Zeus the...King of the Greek gods?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” Diana replied.

Steve rubbed his chin and took a breath. “I think there’s a lot I don’t remember.”

“Yes,” Diana told him. She did not know how she had expected this conversation to go but it had not been like this. “You are taking this very calmly.”

Steve actually laughed. They both seemed startled by it.

“I am so far from calm,” Steve said. He ran his hands through his hair and gave her a chagrined, honest, smile. “But this feels like the least screwed up part of my life right now and I just...”

He shrugged, looking embarrassed.

“I think there’s a lot of don’t remember,” Steve said. “Will you tell me?”

Diana did. She told him everything.

\--    

After, Steve thanked her but went quiet again. It was only early afternoon and he looked exhausted. He had remembered a little more, not much, and only from the first life they had met in, but it seemed to tire him.

Or maybe that was not it. It had only been when his questions had begun to run out, when there was nothing more for Diana to tell, that the weariness seemed to weigh down his shoulders again.

“I need some time to think,” Steve said, finally. Diana felt her heart plummet and some of that must have shown on her face because he grimaced then reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m not going to disappear. I just need a couple hours. I’ll come back, if you’re still going to be here. If that’s okay?”

Diana nodded. Though her throat felt dry and her eyes watery, she felt compelled to say: “You do not have to. You should not feel compelled to—"

“Diana,” Steve said gently. “I’m not going to leave you.”

There was something haggard in his face again and something infinitely sad in his eyes. Diana didn’t understand it.

Steve leaned forward to kiss her, almost chastely, before he stood, promising again: “I’ll come back.”

When he did, three hours later, Diana was shocked to see him in his Army Dress Uniform. She had, she realized, never seen him in a uniform that was not a disguise.

A muscle in Steve’s jaw ticked at her astonishment. He looked uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” Steve said. “It was necessary.”

He handed her a file.

“What is this?” Diana asked, though she already had an idea.

“Everything you need to know,” Steve said. He swallowed and hung his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay while you go through it. I’m going to go back to my apartment. If—after, if you have any questions, I will answer them.”

Diana thought the last part was more about forcing himself than promising her.

He didn’t come close enough to touch her, only nodded — for a moment, she thought he would salute her — before turning precisely on his heel and leaving again.

The file was his, as Diana suspected. She had learned to read military files, learned the jargon and learned to read what remained unwritten between the sparse words of incident reports. Steve’s was not the worst she had seen.

But he had seen terrible things, survived terrible things.

And he had been involved in terrible things.

Diana had not been wholly unprepared for that. Vietnam had been a terrible war and extracted a horrible price.

It was painful and, Diana would admit, disappointing. But it was not surprising.

The First World War had also been a terrible war. _Her_ Steve had not been an innocent. His participation had not been clean nor entirely moral. He had told her as much — that they were all complicit — and she had learned more, after he was gone, of what his war his been like.

This Steve only he snatches of memory from that life and almost all of them revolved around her. He had said he was not going to leave her so sadly, then gone and handed her this.

Diana realized he was expecting that she would want nothing to do with him. He was not going to leave her but he did not expect her to want to stay with him. 

Diana went to his apartment. She did not knock. She saw a lamp on in his bedroom and made a leap, and a guess, stepping into the room through the unlocked door of his tiny balcony.

Her guess was right. Steve was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed frame. His uniform was half folded carefully on the edge of his bed, half scattered haphazardly, as if he had been torn in two between impulses.

His back was to her and he didn’t look up when she entered. He did not wait for her to speak.

“I didn’t participate in any of the civilian killings,” Steve said. His shoulders hunched a little more. “Not to my knowledge. It was...I wasn’t always sure. I tried not to pull the trigger unless I was sure but...”

Diana crouched down beside him. Steve turned his head so he wouldn’t have to look at her.

He took a breath. “But I couldn’t stop anything either.”

“You saw the aftermath,” Diana said.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “But not just the aftermath.”

Diana touched his face, gently turned it. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“The policy,” Steve spat, “was any dead Vietnamese was V.C. And there were guys that followed that. Some of us tried to stop it but...”

He shrugged helplessly. “I wasn’t with that unit long. I took the cowards way out — got a transfer. It was before the worst of it. But still, I cooperated when the army investigated.”

He looked at her, and Diana recognized the burning desire to do _something_ in his eyes. But it was overlaid with a hopelessness she had not seen before. “Nothing happened.”

Diana did not look away from him. “I cannot absolve you of this.”

Steve reared back as if struck, suddenly, fiercely angry: “ _I_ _am not asking for that!_ ”

“Steve. Steve!” Diana grabbed him by the shoulders. She knew if she did not get him to listen now, he would be lost to her.

His mouth shut with a click, even as he struggled to pull away from her grip. Diana let him go. There was such anger in his eyes, at her, but also the thwarted anger of having tried to do something, even small, to make it right and have it be denied.  She had his attention.

“It is not my place to absolve you,” Diana said, more carefully. “And I know you are not asking it of me. I know this wasn't...I told you my greatest secret. You would not have felt right if you had not told me yours.”

Steve nodded slowly, that heartbreaking numbness seeping back in. “Wouldn’t be right for me to hitch my wagon to you without telling you.”

Diana could tell he expected her to get up and go. That he had decided at some point it was easier to never get close to anyone than to risk losing them. She could tell there were still things she did not know, other losses, that he did not think were so morally repugnant that he had to warn her against them. But she knew they had left scars on his heart as well.

Sooner or later, he expected her to be the same.

“Steve,” Diana told him. “I am not leaving you.”

Steve looked at her, unbelieving, almost dazed. Diana took his hands in hers. They were trembling.

“For all that I have known you in two other lifetimes, for all that you trust me against your better instincts,” Diana said. “We do not _know_ each other very well.”

“No,” Steve said hoarsely.

“I think, perhaps, we should amend that,” Diana said.

Steve was still staring at her in disbelief but he squeezed the hands holding his, as if making a promise not to let go, and smiled, just a little, very slowly.

—

It was not easy.

As they began to spend more time together, Diana realized how Steve had limited when and how often she had seen him before.

He was not as well as he presented himself to be.

He was functional. He had a regimented set of coping mechanisms that got him through the day.

He avoided alcohol.

(“I don’t like feeling out of control,” Steve told her, eventually. “And I’ve seen too many guys like me drink because they think it’ll take the edge off and then one becomes two, and three, and four.”

Steve shook his head. “I haven’t had a problem. But I think it would be easy for it to become a crutch. It’s easier to avoid it then to risk that.”

Diana thought of Charlie and, though it broke her heart, she could not disagree.)

He avoided crowds.

(Diana hadn’t noticed when they first met but there were restaurants Steve would not go to because they were too full, insisting it was a waste of time to wait until she made him stop and asked him.

She had figured out early that he did not like lying to her. If he did not want to tell her something, he would simply not speak instead of lying to her.

He looked ashamed but admitted: “I don’t...feel comfortable when it’s hard to get to the exit. I don’t like...that many people around me.”

He managed for work events and the few social events he could not get out of — he was painfully loyal to his sister and the few friends he had retained — by always sticking to the edges of the room, close to the doors.)

He limited how much time he spent with other people.

(At first, Diana thought it was to hide how he struggled to hide that he was unwell from the people who cared about him. She slowly realized how much keeping the facade of being _fine_ up exhausted him.

He gave most of that effort to his job. He worked _obsessively_. He put in long hours and the people he worked with thought he was dedicated and effective and tireless.

Diana saw how he was when he came home. How he slumped down onto the couch and stayed there. He only dragged himself out when he had to.

“It’s better than nothing,” Steve said, with a shrug, unconcerned.)

He slept, when he slept, badly.

(There were still nights where he went back to his apartment instead of staying with her. Even when he stayed, he often retreated to the guest bedroom.

Steve said he didn’t have flashbacks, not when he was awake, but he still fought the war in his sleep. He thrashed, as he had told her, and muttered, the words indistinct and distressed. As often as not, he woke up hollow-eyed.

He had trained himself to live on as little sleep as possible.

“I don’t know if it’s worse when it’s a memory or when I know it’s not real,” he told her, quietly, after she heard him leave the guest room at 4 a.m. to sit on her couch and wait for morning.)

Sudden, unexpected noises made him flinch. Being restrained in anyway made anger and fear flare in his eyes.

(It was not until Diana had seen him at his lowest that she understood how much restraint Steve had to only flinch when a waiter dropped a glass behind him. How much it took for him to simply pull away when someone grabbed his wrist instead of lashing out.

But it cost him and cost him.)

He was prone to bouts of paranoia. He was also aware that he was, which made him second guess himself constantly.

(Sometimes he was suspicious of his unexpected trust in her.

He didn’t trust anyone with the vulnerable parts of himself, he hardly acknowledged them at all. That Diana knew, that she could see them, bothered him on the worst days, when it felt like he couldn’t trust anyone and it made no sense that he trusted her.

Diana offered to use the Lasso. To let him test it, to tie it around her own wrist, if it made it easier for him to believe her. If it proved to him that her intentions were true. 

When she explained what it did, Steve looked so disturbed by the idea Diane thought he might vomit.)

He kept himself rigidly in control at all times.

(He was quiet and stoic and competent everywhere except when the door of his apartment, with its high small windows that allowed few sight lines inside and clear paths to multiple exits, closed and shut out the world.

There, Diana saw him trying to deal with the tension headaches he had powered through at work. She saw him go through cycles of eating less and less because his appetite evaporated and his stomach ached. She saw the way he would zone out, exhausted and muddled, when he came back to himself.

He was obsessively neat and leaving anything even an inch out of place meant he was struggling terribly.

Diana figured out later that leaving his uniform half unfolded was akin to warning of an impending breakdown. It had been weeks before he slept more than a few hours after he gave her his file.)

None of it was sustainable.

(“I only have to keep this up until January 20,” Steve told her, after President Carter lost re-election.

“Steve,” Diana asked, trying to be kind, trying to keep the frustration from her voice. “What happens after that?”

He did not have an answer.)

—

Reagan won the election. Steve didn’t say much about it but his ten-hour and twelve-hour days had already been creeping into fourteen-hour days. They became eighteen hour days.

(Steve’s job at State was to do with Foreign Assistance, specifically logistics, planning and partnership for aid projects.

“The new guys are less likely to unwind things if everything’s set up and ready to go, or better yet, started,” Steve said, when Diana worried about the bags under his eyes, or the way his fingers shook with exhaustion some nights when he got home. “They still might but if they spend some money on infrastructure instead of guns and nuclear warheads, it’s something.”)

Diana thought about forcing him to stop. She could. Steve might even understand it — he knew he was being self destructive, he just wasn’t willing to stop if it meant his work went undone. But even if he understood it, he would hate her for it.

Diana would have sacrificed that, as she would have to save him in his last life. It was not even a choice, if saving him meant she had to lose him, she would do it in a blink, in a heart beat.

But, even more so with this Steve, Diana thought taking his choices away from him would irreparably wound him, that it might even be the death of him, in the end.

Diana thought about leaving him.

(Steve never said anything when she had to go, when there were other places and people that needed her, but the relief in his eyes when she came back was palpable.

His trust in her was constantly at war with his deep-seated belief that he would lose everyone he loved. It _hurt_ him.)

Diana thought about leaving him. She loved him. He loved her.

That was not enough. They weren’t helping each other; Diana thought they might be hurting each other, slowly, without meaning to. They were definitely stuck, static.

Diana decided to wait it out. Steve had given himself the deadline of January 20th, the end of the Carter administration. He had received job offers, trying to tempt him away early, or starting after Inauguration Day. Most were in government still, with Senators or Congressmen, some were with NGOs.

He was careful not to burn any bridges but he politely declined them all.

He worked until the last moment he could and packed up the few personal items he had on Inauguration Day. He walked out of the building less than an hour before Reagan was sworn in.

Diana didn’t see him for two days after that, not until she went to his apartment and let herself in.

Steve was sitting at his kitchen table with a mug in one hand and the rest of the pot of coffee in front of him. He looked dazed. His hair was a mess and there were pillow creases imprinted in his cheek. He was wearing boxers, and undershirt and a robe she had left there at some point. It should have been smaller on him than it was. The weight he had lost stood out more starkly than when he was fully dressed.

“Sorry,” Steve said hoarsely, seeing her worry at once. “Think this is the first time I’ve been up since Tuesday. Guess I needed to catch up on sleep.”

He tried, and failed, to muster a smile for her. He ran a hand through his hair and laughed humourlessly. “I’m still just. So fucking tired.”

Diana tugged his hand away from his hair as he started to pull it. She kept it as she sat down next to him. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” Steve answered. “I just want to sleep.”

“Steve...” Diana sighed. “I think this is no longer something you should be dealing with on your own.”

Steve’s breathing hitched. He looked at her like she had tried to throw him a life preserver and it had landed just out of reach.

“I know,” he said quietly and then, all in a rush: “The thing is, if I were to a see a shrink, I would never be get a job like...like I had before. They would see that on my clearance and...disqualify me.”

“That is not right,” Diana said firmly.

“No, it’s not,” Steve said. “But it’s what will happen. They’ll see me as too much of a risk.”

“Is that what you want?” Diana asked. “Another job like you had? You turned down all those offers.”

“It’s what I can do to effect change,” Steve said. He swallowed, looking down at the table, and said very quietly. “I have to atone somehow.”

Diana’s heart broke for him. “Steve—"

“Please don’t tell me I don’t have to,” Steve said, very quietly, meeting her eyes again. “I have to help somehow.”

Diana squeezed his hand. He was holding on tightly, clinging tightly to that one point of contact, even though she could tell from his posture that he wouldn’t be able to stand it if she tried to hold him.

“If you did not feel you had to,” Diana tried. “What would you want to do?”

Steve looked at her, completely bewildered.

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I just...I’m so tired. I just want to sleep. I just want to sleep.”

—

It got worse before it got better.

Steve was erratic and a mess and he was trying so hard it made Diana ache to see it.

But he had no concrete reason to force himself out of bed in the morning anymore and the prospect of another job that was anything as demanding as his last seemed insurmountable to him. Steve hated that, and hated himself for that, Diana knew. All his loathing was turned inwards, eating at him like a canker.

He was trying, she knew he was. Most mornings he forced himself out of bed. When former colleagues called to ask for his advice, he could make it seem like nothing was wrong. More sporadically, he spoke to old army buddies. He didn’t pretend as much, with them, but he spoke to them even less frequently and he never saw them. He rarely saw anyone but her.

Steve was trying but he was drowning. And he knew it.

He never...actively pushed Diana away, she didn’t think he had the energy for that. But he told her he wouldn’t blame her for leaving him, that he would understand it. That he knew she probably should.

It was infuriating and the only thing that kept Diana from doing just that was that he wasn’t being manipulative. He was trying to be kind. He honestly could not see a way out of the hole that had swallowed him and didn’t want to drag her down with him.

He loved her and despite it all, she loved him, this version of him, not just the memory of _her_ Steve. This Steve, who struggled so hard against his past and kept so much inside and tried so hard to do good, who looked at her like it hurt him to let her in, even a little bit, but did it anyway.

Who, eventually, let himself ask for help.

—

Knocking on her door woke Diana just after midnight. She was not surprised to open her door and find Steve leaning against her door frame.

She was shocked to find he was drunk, a whiskey bottle still in his hand.

He looked at her, took an audibly deep breath, one more gulp from the bottle, and handed it over.

Diana took it. Rage and sorrow were warring in her heart, making her throat burn.

“Are you going to come in?” She asked, more coldly than she expected herself to.

Steve flinched. He didn’t look her in the eye. His hands were shaking. “If you’ll have me.”

Diana did not have the impulse to reach out and touch him that she normally had to squash. But she stepped back and let him inside.

She closed the door behind him, stepping close enough to smell the booze on his breath and see the way he was trying to keep from weaving. It made her so angry that she had to step away for a moment. She left him in the hallway and went to dump the rest of the alcohol — there wasn’t much — out in the sink.

She could hear him stumbling further into her apartment. When she went back out, it took her a moment to spot him. He had wedged himself into the small spot between her sofa and the wall. His head was in his hands.

He looked...small.

Diana went and crouched down in front of him. She had never seen him drink before, he had explained why he avoided it more than once to her. He was worried that he wouldn't stop once he started, that it would be too appealing and numb him too well. The way it had too many of the people he had served with.

“Steve,” Diana said, trying to be gentle. She was not always good at being gentle the way she thought he needed her to be right now. She pried his hands away from his face.  “This has to stop. You can’t do this on your own anymore.”

Steve nodded like bobble head doll. He didn’t pull his hands away from her. “I know.”

He took a breath, then another. He didn’t look away from her, even as his eyes welled him, but she wasn’t sure he was really seeing her. “It’s Nick’s birthday today. It would’ve been.”

Diana froze. Steve never talked about Nick. He talked about Maya, Nick’s widow, and Sandy, Nick’s daughter — Steve’s goddaughter — but never about Nick himself. It had taken nearly a year for Diana to even learn his name.

“We...we were on an extraction mission,” Steve began hoarsely. “A rescue mission. But the chopper was shot down.”

“Only three of us survived the crash,” Steve said. Diana squeezed his hands but he didn’t react. “The pilot, me and Nick. Pilot didn’t last long. Nick was...bad but he was alive. He was talking. We managed to radio in our location and they said they were coming so...so we waited.”

Steve shook his head. “They couldn’t get to us. They _tried_ but...but...” he shook his head again. “It would’ve cost so many lives. I got the dog tags, the other guys, and Nick...”

Steve was crying, silently, but he couldn’t seem to let go of her hands to wipe away the tears. His eyes sharpened and for the first time since he had started speaking, Diana thought he was actually seeing her.

“Nick was alive when we left,” Steve said, chillingly calm. “He was alive when we left. I had him on my back. And I got back to our side, I don’t know how I got back, but when I got back they told me he was gone.”

His voice broke. “I didn’t know. I don’t know when he died. I thought I would know. He was my best friend.”

Diana let go of Steve’s hands and he made a sound like she had kicked him in the stomach for the brief moment before she pulled him close and held on tightly. He collapsed against her. His hands clutched at her back and he pressed his face hard against her shoulder. She could feel wetness seeping into her nightshirt, could feel him trembling, but he was completely silent as he cried.

They sat there on the floor for a long time, Diana wasn’t sure how long, before Steve lifted his head just enough to mumble: “‘M going to be sick.”

Diana helped him up, helped him to the bathroom when his limbs didn’t want to work right. He leaned over her toilet and gagged twice before he vomited and vomited, until he was just retching up nothing.

Diana stayed close so he would know she was there. She kept an arm on his back and wiped his face clean with a washcloth when he was finished. She got him a toothbrush when the idea of not brushing his teeth, of just going to bed seemed to distress him.

Steve clumsily brushed his teeth over her toilet and spat before slumping backwards so his back was pressed against her bathtub. He was clutching the toothbrush like it was a lifeline, like it could make him feel normal.

“I hate being drunk,” he said. “I hate feeling out of control.”

Diana put one hand around his so the toothbrush stopped shaking. She touched his cheek. “I know.”

His face creased, collapsed, and he said, brokenly: “I feel so out of control.”

Diana swallowed. She did not think Steve would survive like this much longer. Something had to change.

But tonight was not the time.

“Let's get you to bed,” Diana told him and Steve did not object when she put him in her bed, or when she slid in beside him and held him tightly. She did not think it was a good idea to leave him alone. 

She did not sleep. Steve slept...fitfully. Diana stayed awake to soothe him, when he started to twitch or mutter, if she could, and to wake him when she couldn’t.

It was a long night.

Steve was predictably hungover in the morning. The way he smelled, like sweat and the remnants of vomit and alcohol, were upsetting him even as he fell over himself to apologize.

Diana stopped him, gently, and he went to shower while she made coffee and toast.

She doubted his stomach could handle anything more and she had never been a good cook.

Steve hovered in the doorway when he was done, damp and looking hesitant.

“Come sit,” she told him.

He did. Diana had put cheese and jam out on the table but he only fiddled with a piece of dry toast, breaking a piece off and turning it over in his hands.

“I’ve never—" Steve coughed, trying to clear the hoarseness from his voice. “I’ve never made you breakfast, have I?”

Diana was viscerally struck by the memory of Steve as she had first known him, and the quiet, not-quite promise he had made that night in Veld, the quiet longing and happiness in him at the thought. The way it had made her feel.  

He had never made he breakfast, not in any lifetime. They never seemed to get that.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, in front of her. His face had creased. “I’ve upset you. I can—"

“No,” Diana said, firmly, and put her hand on his arm to forestall any offers to go. She did not want him to go.

“It was a memory. It was not you,” Diana said. She frowned a little.

Steve, for all the he was coming apart at the seams, was still too observant.

“Ah,” Steve said with a tight, sad smile. “Another lifetime?”

Diana nodded. She had thought...she had thought about what she was going to say to Steve. She did not want to hurt him and she was not going to leave him but he needed help that she could not give him.

Her own sudden, sharp sense of loss caught her off guard.

“Do you remember—” Diana began, then stopped herself. But if anything Steve looked more settled than he had since he arrived at her apartment last night.

“I know you remember the attack on Veld,” Diana said carefully — the memory of the gas attack was one of her worst memories and she knew it was far too similar to the worst of his. “Do you remember the night before? It was the first time—” (we danced, kissed, loved each other) “—I saw snow fall.”

“No,” Steve said, shaking his head and looking at her regretfully. “I think I just have the bad memories.”

“Not all bad,” Diana said. Many of his memories were terrible but...she remembered the look in his eyes when he saw her in her armour in the caves, that was not all bad and she knew he remembered: “Selfridges was frustrating but I would not call it bad.”

Steve huffed, nearly a laugh: “No, it wasn’t.”

Diana smiled at him. He had let his dry toast fall back to the plate. She took his hand, rubbing her thumb over the curve between his thumb and finger.

“I don’t think you can do this on your own, Steve. You're not well,” she told him. She did not look away from his face and he was meeting her eyes. “And I don’t think it will be enough if I am your only support either.”

Steve swallowed. “I know.”

He sighed. “I think...I think I need to leave Washington.”

That surprised Diana. “Why do you think that would help?”

“I keep thinking that I—I need to get back up, I need to get back into it,” Steve said. He looked away for the first time. “And then I look into a job or someone calls me and I just...I feel like I’m choking.”

He shook his head. “I think as long as I’m here, I won’t be able to stop thinking...I should be doing _something_ more. And I know, god, even the _good_ guys, you should hear what they say sometimes. I know I won’t pass a security clearance if I’ve been to a _shrink_ because I can’t handle my Vietnam _bullshit_.”

His shoulders slumped. He looked disgusted and tired. Defeated.

“Is that what you want still?” Diana asked, ignoring everything else. “To work in government?”

Steve rubbed his hand over his forehead then let it drop and took hers back. “I don’t know. I can’t even tell anymore. But I think...I don’t think it’ll _fix_ anything but I think it’ll be easier to...to ask for help if I’m not here.”

“Where do you want to go?” Diana asked.

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“I have places in a few cities,” Diana reminded him. He blinked at her in surprise. She smiled at him. It did neither of them any good to let him get mired too deeply in the darkness and malaise of his own mind. “I am in more demand than you, you know. My home base isn’t even in this country.”

“Right,” Steve said, with a hint of a smile. “I keep forgetting that you own this building.”

(She owned the building because Steve had left Etta his money, enough to live comfortably on for many years, and Etta had added it to funds Napi, Sameer and Charlie had secured for her from Sir Patrick’s accounts following Ares’ demise.

She had needed help too, once.)

“You don’t have to stay here,” she told him. “We can go anywhere. But,” and Diana wanted to make sure he understood this: “this must only be a first step, Steve. I think you are right, leaving Washington won’t fix things. And you will not get well on your own. But we can do whatever makes this easier for you.”

“I know. I—” he faltered and could not look at her. His voice went hushed, as if he was confessing, as if he did not want to say it. “I don’t know...what I would done. If I hadn’t...been able to come here last night.”

Diana’s heart was in her throat and it ached but what made it worse that she wasn’t surprised. She got up — Steve flinched — and moved to sit beside him, instead of across from him, and put her arms around him. He was stiff at first, for too long. He relaxed by inches but never fully.

But he did not pull away and after awhile, he tentatively slid an arm around her waist and leaned into her a little more.

“You know the stupidest thing?” Steve asked suddenly. “It would have been easy for me to get a deferral. I was only half way through my degree and this...this one prof I really liked was trying to talk me into grad school. But what I really had my heart set on was joining the Peace Corps. Ask what you can do for your country and all that nonsense.”

His mouth twisted and when he laughed, it was a joyless sound. “And then, with the draft starting, I thought, why should some other poor sucker go instead of me? So I dropped out and enlisted. Re-upped, even, when my tour was over. I thought, I was already in hell, if I could keep another person from it...”

“That sounds very much like you,” Diana told him.

“Unable to escape war?” Steve said, bitterly.

“Willing to sacrifice yourself for others,” Diana said, adamantly. No matter how much it broke her heart, it was part of his character that never seemed to waver. “Doing the noble thing.”

Steve grimaced. “For an ignoble war.”

“No war is ever noble,” Diana said. “Some must be fought but none are _good_.”

Steve raised his head to look at her. He was listening. She stroked his hair back from his face. She wished, even just once, that someone could have spared him from war, that he had not been the one to have to sacrifice.

“They are only made to seem so in the aftermath, by those who wish to use them for their own purposes,” Diana said. “No matter how just the cause, war always causes such suffering. Some battles must be waged but I cannot think of them as noble. That is what I have learned in my time here.”

Steve touched her cheek. He was looking at her like he had on the watchtower after she had defeated Ludendorff, like he wanted to be able to make it right but didn’t know to convince her, could only keep trying.

“I’m sorry you had to learn that,” he said quietly.

Diana thought of Themyscira, wistfully for a moment. She missed it. She did not deny that.

But she also thought of Steve, here and then, and Etta and Sameer and Charlie and Napi and Ameline and Marc and everyone she had known in between. Who she would have been without all of them, if she had not helped Steve and stayed safe on the island.

“I am not,” she said.

\--

They moved to New York. It was meant to be temporary because the house Diana kept there was vacant but then, they stayed.

Steve found a therapist who seemed to help; Diana worked with the MET. They settled into a routine.

(Steve went through three therapists before he found one he could stand. Even then, as she warned them, he got acutely worse at first. There was a three month stretch where he could not make himself leave the apartment, except for his appointments, and sometimes not even then. He needed sleeping pills to sleep at all and even with them he still woke up screaming.

He went so quiet that some days he didn’t speak at all.

He started writing her letters, when he found something too hard to speak of. He told her that she didn’t have to read them.

She did, all of them. Some were horrific and some were so mundane she wanted to ask why? Why had this moment or that stuck in him like a knife?

Sometimes Steve answered her without being asked. Most of the time, he couldn’t explain it himself.

Even after he started to level out and things got easier, he kept writing her. She would end up with hundreds of letters, tucked away in a box under their bed.)

Steve had setbacks but slowly, painstakingly, the good days began to outnumber the bad. Slowly, the bad days themselves got a little better, felt a little less impossible to overcome and the good days...Steve remembered what having good days, really _good_ days, was like, instead of the pale imitation he had been surviving on for so long.

And Diana realized she was experiencing them with him for the first time.

(She would always remember the first time she heard him really laugh, the way he sounded — just a bit goofy — and the way his eyes squinted, how big and bright his smile was.

Even the first time she had known him, he had never let himself go like that.)

Steve’s therapy appointments went down to once every two weeks, and, after several attempts, they found a mood stabilizer with fewer, more manageable side effects. He joined a support group with other Vietnam veterans that met every other week.

It was over a year before Steve trying to go back to work seemed possible but he volunteered, for awhile, before that. Mostly at the food bank, and a little, with the fledgling VVA.

He got back in touch with old friends, even his sister, who he had avoided because he knew she would be able to tell something was wrong.

They spent more time with Maya and Sandy. It was a shorter drive to see them from New York than it had been from Washington and Diana came to adore them as much as Steve did.

(Steve refused to visit during those first, worst months in New York, and for half a year after. He called when he could and wrote letters — highly sanitized, not touching on his on problems at all — when he couldn’t.

The first time they visited when he began to get better, Maya had found a moment to pull Diana aside and hug her very tightly.

“Thank god,” she said, her voice thick. “I thought we were going to lose him too. He wouldn’t let us _help_.”

It was easier for him to see them, now that he had help taming the guilt that used to eat him alive for being there, being alive, when Nick wasn’t.)

It was not for as long as either of them would have liked but Steve managed to see some very old friends as well. He came to England with her when Diana got a call saying Sameer wasn’t doing well.

(Steve froze when he first saw Etta and Diana had to help him sit down quickly. Etta shuffled over with her cane, moving faster than Diana had seen her move since her 90th birthday, and sat down right beside him. She patted him on the knee fondly.

“Diana said it walloped you when you remembered something,” she said. “Hope it was one of the good ones. Don’t throw up on my couch, now.”

Steve laughed, watery but happy. He started both of them by leaning over to kiss Etta’s cheek. “A bunch of good ones. How did I make it this far without you?”

“By being rather silly about rather a lot, from what I hear,” Etta said, dryly. She patted his cheek. Her eyes were wet; she, above everyone else, had been Diana’s confidant while Steve was struggling and for all the years without him. “But you’ve found Diana now. All will be well.”

It was harder, with Sameer. He had had a number of strokes and could no longer speak, though he still recognized people. He started to cry when he saw Steve and they sat with him for a long time, Diana speaking to him and Steve holding his hand.)

Steve went with her to both their funerals.

It was after Etta’s that the Louvre first approached her. They had been courting her for some time and when she and Steve were in London, they sent a representative to meet with her.

(Steve found London strange, not because he didn’t like it, he was, as he said, unreasonably fond of it. He remembered snatches of things, from even before he had met her, but not everything. Just enough.

“It feels like I’m walking around with an old map overlaid in my head,” Steve said, after he tried to turn down a street that was no longer there with the absent air of a person very used to making the journey. “I don’t always _remember_ it but I think I...know, somehow, the way it used to be.”

Diana thought of Steve as a boy, the way he had picked up German and English like it was nothing, the way he was such a good spy, even though he never made it to his 17th birthday. She worried, sometimes, about what that _knowing_ cost him, cost both of them.)

They offered her the position of assistant director of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities.

Diana turned them down. At least, for now.

Moving back to Europe permanently, meant taking Steve away from the support system they had started to build. It didn’t sit well with him that she was making that sacrifice for him — he hated the idea of holding her back — but it was what made things work for both of them. Steve was not ready for that to be disrupted. 

And Diana...she liked the life they had built together. Her work at the MET was interesting and engaging, if not the most prestigious position that had been dangled in front of her. She liked the people she worked with there. Maybe it was something they could consider in the future but, for the moment, New York felt right for them.

(New York was a useful location for when disaster struck and she had to don her armour. She hated leaving Steve when that duty called and she knew how he worried about her, unable to stop himself, no matter how indestructible she proved to be.

But it was impossible for her to stand aside when people needed help and Steve told her as much.

“It would kill you. Even if you were still here, you wouldn’t be yourself anymore,” Steve told her, the belief in his eyes shining through, like it had on the runway before he left her behind.

But they were not on that runway, they were lying in bed together and she had her arm stretched across his chest. She could feel his heart beating under her palm.

He was warm and alive and as vulnerable as he could allow himself to be laying next to her. And he might have to go sleep in the spare room halfway through the night because he couldn’t stand the weight of her arm or the blankets or just needed the space but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there and not leaving. It was just how they made things work.

“Is that how you feel?” she asked him, watching his face in the dim light.

“Sometimes,” Steve said. He ran his fingers along her arm idly. “But I think it’s different for you. I could...help sometimes, you know? The most I could ever do was, maybe, save one life, save one day.”

Diana’s heart skipped a beat, as it did whenever he unconsciously echoed something from the past. She knew he did not remember their last moments on the runway. He had never remembered his second life at all and he only had pieces from the first.

But he was also making a face, like he was stupid for saying that, like he didn’t believe he had ever been able to save the day, to do anything to help. Like that impulse wasn’t ingrained in every molecule of him.

“Hey,” Diana said, entwining their fingers and giving his hand a squeeze. She did not let those remarks slide anymore; she did not want them to gain anymore ground in his mind than they already had. “Don’t. You did. You do.”

Steve didn’t look like he agreed but he didn’t argue with her. He raised their hands to his lips and kissed hers instead.

“You do so much more than I ever could,” Steve said. “Than any of us ever could. You—I think you save the world, sometimes, because you keep it from sliding into too much darkness. You give people hope even if they never know who you are.”

Diana swallowed. She knew just how long Steve had spent believing in nothing, living day by day in defeat. It was terrible and wonderful whenever he told her how much he believed in her.

Diana let go of his hand so that she could stroke hers over his cheek, over the beginnings of the beard he had begun to grow again. He pressed his hand against hers and turned his face just enough to kiss the palm of her hand.

“You should never give that up, not for anyone,” Steve said. “And I would pack up and move in with my sister before you sacrificed it for me.”)

They were happy.

\--

(After, Diana would always remember this:)

It was summer, in the early evening. They were at Maya’s house for Sandy’s birthday. She was wearing a bright yellow dress her grandmother had made her and had finally run off with her friends at the promise of a movie on TV and popcorn after clinging to Steve all day, insistently pulling him along on all their little adventures.

“You spoil her,” Maya chided good-naturedly, handing him a bottle of Coke before one of the other parents, who didn’t know better, could offer him a beer.

“Godfather’s prerogative,” Steve said, sitting down on the edge of the deck next to Diana. He took a drink. The last adventure had been picking the kids up and spinning them around. They were a demanding bunch. “We didn’t go overboard on the present.”

“You wanted to buy her a pony,” Maya protested.

“Yeah, but we _didn’t,_ ” Steve said, grinning.

“Paying for riding lessons isn’t any better,” Maya said, even as she reached out to ruffle his hair. Even a year ago, Steve would have flinched away. “How I ended up with a horse-mad daughter, I’ll never know.”

“Maybe she’ll grow out of it,” Steve offered.

“You’ve been saying that for three years now,” Maya scoffed but she leaned over and kissed the top of his head. “It was very thoughtful. You’re both so good to her. Thank you.”

Steve flushed dully and rubbed the back of his neck. Diana linked her arm through his and grinned at Maya. “You’re welcome. She is more lovely each time we see her.”

There was a crash from inside and several happy-shrieking little voices. Maya closed her eyes for a moment. Steve snickered.

“I’m not too sure about that,” Maya said. She sighed and pushed herself up, striding back toward the house. “Sandy! What have you gotten into now?”

Diana laughed. Steve grinned at her, so wide his eyes squinted, and bumped their shoulders together. She leaned her head against him and he put his arm around her waist.

They were sitting at the far edge of the deck and Steve was right on the edge, closest to the fence door. But he wasn’t standing at the fence, looking tense, watching the ten adults milling about the yard warily, even though he knew them all. He had spent most of the day in the midst of the small stampede of children, some of whom got his attention by grabbing his arm and tugging it hard, without an issue.

Diana tilted her head up and kissed him. Because he was there. Because she could. When she pulled away, his eyes were soft.

The kitchen window slid open and someone, probably Maya, pushed the radio against the screen and turned it up.

Steve groaned and someone else shouted: “Anything but Air Supply!”

There was a scuffle in the kitchen and the radio clicked off, then on again, and finally to another channel.

This time it was Diana Ross.

“Yeah!” One of Steve and Nick’s old army buddy’s said. He abandoned his beer on the deck and pulled his wife onto the grass to dance with him.

They were not the only ones.

Diana shifted beside him and Steve guessed what she was thinking before she said anything. He huffed, but joyfully, and smiled at her.

“You know I’m a terrible dancer, right?” Steve said.

Diana did know that now. She grinned at him. “You taught me to dance, once.”

“You poor thing,” Steve said, kissing her cheek in mock apology. “Was I any better then?”

“As it turns out, no,” Diana said. But she still remembered Steve as she had first known him with his hand in hers and on her waist. Swaying towards each other. “But it was very romantic.”

“Oh well, if I had that going for me,” he stretched abruptly. It meant they were not so entwined, but he put his hands on the deck and leaned forward, looking at her with an expression she recognized.

He was weighing whether he could share something with her or whether it would upset him to tell it.

“You know,” Steve said, leaning back into her a little, evidently deciding to risk it. “Nick and Maya taught me how to dance.”

“We _tried_ to,” Maya said, rejoining them and hopping down to sit beside them. There was mischief in her eyes.

Steve groaned. “No. No, no one needs to hear that story.”

Steve very rarely talked about Nick. Even the good stories were hard for him to tell. He had written some down for Sandy, for later, but most of the time he found it too hard to speak about him.

But there was a spark in his eyes and when Maya gave him a questioning look, he answered her with a nod.

She still double checked. “But it’s such a _good_ story.”

Steve sighed, sounding overly aggrieved, and said: “Fine. Fine!”

Maya clapped. Steve shook his head but he was smiling. “You’re building it up too much.”

Maya waved him off. “So, they’re leaving for airborne training soon and some asshole got one night of their leave cancelled.”

“He kept sabotaging the CO’s quarters,” Steve said sardonically. “Said Leavenworth was better than ‘Nam.”

Maya gave him a look but didn’t let it darken the conversation. “Nick convinces Steve to sneak out...”

“No, no,” Steve interrupted. “That’s not what happened. He was moping about how we were shipping out soon and he was losing one of his nights to see you and sneaking out was the best way I could think of to get him to shut up about it.”

“Mmhmm. Sure, I believe you,” Maya said. “So, anyway, they sneak out—"

“We had to scale a wall, impersonate an officer and hide underneath a truck for fifteen minutes,” Steve added. “We didn’t just waltz out.”

“—and I get a phone call to meet them at this bar off base,” Maya continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “I was never clear on whether that place was your idea or Nick’s.”

Steve looked at her expression and quickly answered: “Nick’s.”

“It would not have been my first choice,” Maya explained magnanimously. “But the music wasn’t terrible, even if they did overcharge.”

“It was open and close to base,” Steve said.

“Ah, but that’s what got you in trouble in the end,” Maya said. She smirked. “Nearly.”

“Yup,” Steve agreed, too quickly. “We—"

“Nope, we’re not skipping over the part where that blonde girl tried so hard to get your attention while you were sitting there, holding up the bar,” Maya said.

Steve flushed a dull red and sighed as if he were long suffering. Diana snorted at his expression.

“I was trying to be a gentleman,” Steve said.

“She was not interested in having a gentleman,” Maya said. “If you had an ounce of sense or even the slightest ability to follow a beat, the rest of the night might have gone better for you.”

“I doubt that,” Steve groused but their was fondness in his eyes.

“This woman got him on the dance floor and she tried, bless her, but anything more than a slow dance and Steve’s got two left feet,” Maya said. “I should know. When she moved on to greener, more rhythmic pastures, I tried to at least teach him a move or two to fall back on. And then _Nick_ tried—"

“And then our CO’s daughter walked in,” Steve finished dryly.

“And she had a huge crush on Nick,” Maya said. “She would have spotted them in an instant.”

Diana laughed. “And what was your punishment?”

“Oh no,” Steve said. He looked vaguely insulted. “We didn’t get caught.”

“Steve spotted her first, grabbed both of us and pulled us in to the men’s room,” Maya said. She smacked Steve on the arm lightly. “She didn’t know me from Adam, you did not need to drag me in there. It was gross.”

“You would have wanted to know what was going on if I had just dragged Nick away. You would have given us up accidentally!” Steve protested. “She _didn’t_ know you. You could have just walked back out.”

Maya gave him an exasperated look. “Steve. What would everyone else in that bar thought if I had walked out of the  _men’s room_?”

Steve went even redder. “I didn’t think of that.”

“I did,” Maya told him. “I didn’t crawl out the bathroom window with the two of you just for fun.”

Diana had mistimed stealing a sip from Steve’s pop. She nearly spit it out. Steve paused, rubbing her back and checking to make sure she was okay.

Maya kept going.

“It was not large enough. Nick nearly got stuck. He only got through by wriggling so much he lost his trousers,” she paused. “Thank you for that by the way.”

“You’re welcome?” Steve said.

“But we did get out,” Maya said. “We thought we were home free. And then the CO drove by.”

“His daughter had also snuck out,” Steve explained. “She got caught.”

“You escaped again? Diana asked, deeply amused.

“Yes,” Steve answered quickly. “That’s what we did.”

“They hopped a fence and landed in a dumpster,” Maya finished, triumphantly. “I had to sneak them home and clean them up in the basement before they could go back to base. Did you get any sleep that night?”

“No,” Steve said. He was beet red. “We got there just before morning reverie. But we _didn’t_ get caught.”

And Nick had gotten another night with Maya before they left. They hadn’t known it yet but she was already pregnant that night. They would be married just before they shipped out. Steve would be Nick’s best man.

“You _still_ don’t know how to dance though,” Maya said.

Diana kissed his cheek. “I will still dance with you.”

Steve’s smile went soft. “I’ll take you up on that if we’re done going over my youth follies.”

He stood and offered Diana his hand, intentionally overly formal. Maya rolled her eyes at them but she was grinning — Diana knew how much it meant to her to see Steve happy.

A slow song had just come on, luckily for Steve. Swaying had always been something he could do.

And slow dancing involved getting even closer now then it had the first time she had known him. It was nothing at all to brush her lips against his jaw as they danced, to be so close that she felt his breath against her cheek.

“I don’t mind dancing,” he said, quietly in her ear. “Not when it’s with you.”

Diana kissed him, not for as long as she would have liked to, but Steve would flush and be bashful about it if Maya whistled at them. When they parted and went back to swaying on the grass, she closed her eyes tightly for a moment. She wanted to keep how happy she felt in that moment, for that day, tucked into her heart for as long as she lived.

Diana had to surrender Steve to Sandy a few songs later when the children grew bored of the movie and she ran out into the yard and leaped at him, demanding to be danced with. Steve let her stand on his feet as they shuffled together, then picked her up to spin her around a little more as she got tired and the party wound down.

(Diana’s heart felt so full she could hardly stand it.)

“Do you want children?” Diana asked, much later, when they were alone together, after Sandy had fallen asleep on Steve’s shoulder and he had carried her up to bed.

Steve paused for a moment, then finished taking his shirt off. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair before looking at her.

“I did,” Steve said, carefully.

Diana did not miss his phrasing. “And now?”

He smiled sadly, scooting back on the pull out bed, leaning against the back of it. “I think maybe I’ve missed my chance on that.”

Diana came forward to kiss him, slowly, straddling his lap. She rubbed her thumb over his cheek, against the toughness of his beard.

“You are not as old as you think you are,” Diana told him.

“I feel like it sometimes,” Steve huffed, but then he tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear and turned serious. “I’m not sure how good of an idea that is right now.”

Diana kissed his forehead and then the tip of his nose and then his jaw and then where his pulse jumped in his neck before returning to his lips.

“Diana,” he whispered.

She sat back for a moment and regarded him, the sadness that still shadowed his eyes sometimes, the happiness that could shine through them. She loved him, wholly, just for himself.

She took one of his hands in both of hers and kissed his fingers.

“It does not have to now,” she told him. She kissed his lips again because she could. His other arm wrapped around her back. “It can be later. We have time, Steve.”

He swallowed, looking at her with amazement and love. “Is that something— Would you want to—?”

It had never been Diana’s burning ambition to have children; she was not like her mother in that regard. She had not thought she about it in a long time. _Her_ Steve had been out of reach for a longtime.

“I would not mind,” Diana told him. “Not if it’s with you.”

Steve looked flummoxed for a moment and then he was surging up to kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.

The future felt very full of hope.

—

They had to go back to Washington for the mess with Barbara Ann.

It was fine in the moment. Steve was exceptionally capable in a crisis. He did not hesitate to jump back into the fray and in the midst of the chaos was calm and competent and controlled. Diana worried about him every moment but it was like a buzz in the back of her brain. It did not stop her from doing her duty and putting things right.

(The aftermath was different.

They had to drive back home from Washington because even the thought of the crowds at the airport made Steve go hyper vigilant. When he realized what he was doing he started to panic and broke down.

His hands shook all the way back to New York. He didn’t sleep for two days and would not leave the apartment until his appointment with his therapist.

He calmed down, a little, after that, after the shock of how acutely and quickly he could still be affected was eased.

It was still a long, slow slog for him to get back to his standard of normal.

Diana did not hate Barbara Ann for her curiosity or her mistakes. She liked her, even, when the circumstances were different.

But it made her furious that she had not considered the fallout of her actions on others, not just Steve and the struggles she could not have known about, but the people who were injured or killed along the way, the lives that had been damaged through no fault of their own.

She hated the selfishness of it, the destructiveness that people wrought on each other.

Diana would never stop trying but she understood, better, how Steve could become paralyzed with it, the feeling that no matter what he did, it would never be enough.)

—

(She thought they had more time. She thought they had a future. She thought the life they built together would last for so much longer. She thought...she thought...)

It had been nearly six years since she had bumped into Steve at an art show in Washington. They were talking about making the move to France, nothing concrete, not yet, but serious, about how they could make it work.

It felt like it was going to happen.

(It was not surprising that they were driving down to see Sandy and Maya more often. Not being in driving distance of them was one of the hardest things to contemplate for Steve.)

Steve drove down on a Wednesday to see them. Diana was supposed to leave work at noon on Friday to join him but there was a mix up at work — nothing pressing, an artifact was mislabelled, sorted incorrectly and temporary lost. It was not Diana’s job to deal with it but the intern responsible was beside herself and no one else stepped up to help.

Diana stayed late to help the intern track it down and set things right. It did not take as long as she had feared to find it and, though she had already called Steve to tell him to expect her the next morning, she decided to drive down that night.

(She could never figure out where the impulse to drive down that night, in the dark, after an annoying day had come from.

Except...she had missed Steve. She had wanted to see Steve.)

She thought nothing of it when she first spotted the smoke. It was only when she got closer, when she had to pull over because fire trucks were blocking Maya’s street that her heart began to proud frantically.

She had a moment of knee-weakening relief when she spotted Maya’s house, untouched. The fire was further down the street.

It did not last long.

(Steve had told her when they spoke on the phone — only hours ago, when he made sympathetic noises about her frustration and laughed at the way she described one of her colleagues puffing himself up like a self-important peacock and told her he loved her before they hung up — that they were going to a neighbours house that night to watch the baseball game.

For a moment, she had forgotten that.)

“Diana!” Maya screamed.

Diana sprinted to her side, the scene so chaotic that no one noticed she was there between one blink and the next. Maya was climbing out of the back of an ambulance, her face streaked with tears. Everything smelled horribly of smoke.

Sandy was inside the ambulance, an oxygen mask on her face.

“She’s okay. They’re taking us to the hospital. She’s going to be okay,” Maya said but she sounded frantic. She grabbed Diana’s hands and gripped them so tightly that it would have left bruises on anyone else. “Diana — Diana, Steve—”

She choked and sobbed, pressing a hand to her face. Diana felt frozen, as if hands had come out of the ground to grab her and keep her there, weighted to the ground. One of them taking hold of her heart and squeezing.

Maya didn’t have to say it. Diana knew.

“He—We were at the Murphy’s,” Maya said, her voice shaking. “The kids were all next door. They’ve got a VCR. Ashley was babysitting. They were so excited—”

Her voice broke. Diana could feel her own chin tremble. “You don’t—”

“No, it’s better if you hear it from me,” Maya said, resolved, almost angry. “He—Ashley got most of them out, when the fire started.”

(A mouse chewed through a wire; the insulation had been installed improperly. It had spread quickly inside the walls.)

“But Sandy and Janine had gone upstairs to play in her bedroom.”

(Janine had a new doll she wanted to show off to her best friend.)

“It all happened so fast. Ashley was screaming and when we ran out we could see them in the window,” Maya’s voice broke again. “Steve ran inside before any of us figured out what to do.”

(Steve was exceptionally capable in a crisis. It was the aftermath...)

Diana closed her eyes as if to stop it but she could still picture it. Her throat felt dry and swallowing did nothing to help.

“He broke the window. He had to throw them out the window down to us. The roof was collapsing. He couldn’t get out that way. He went back inside and—Diana—Diana, I’m sorr—” Maya stopped short, sobbing.

(They found him in the back bedroom. He had collapsed. They thought, based on the way he had fallen, that he had been trying to get to the window.)

Diana was clutching at Maya, probably too tightly, but Maya was clutching back. Diana did not know what she would have done if she had not had the other woman to wrap her arms around, if Maya hadn’t been there to squeeze her so tightly it seemed to release the iron grip around her heart that froze her in place.

(“I love you,” Steve had said, four hours before. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”)

“Where is he?” Diana asked, when she could. “Is he—”

Maya shook his head. “They—they—I think they were going in to get his body—”

Diana couldn’t speak. She lifted her head and looked toward the half-ruined house.

(She saw the plane above her; Steve scattered to the stars. She felt the weight of his head in her lap as he bled out.)

“Ma’am, we have to leave now,” the paramedic said from behind them.

Maya untangled herself, looking back at her daughter for a moment, before looking at Diana and reaching out to squeeze her hands again. “You—you could come with us. Wait until—”

Diana shook her head. “Go. Take care of Sandy.”

Maya hugged her again, so tightly, but then she let go and climbed back into the ambulance with her daughter. The doors closed and they drove away.

Diana was left alone among the crowd.

\--

( _Name: Steve Rockwell Trevor._

_Age: 44_

_Cause of Death: Smoke Inhalation..._ )

The fire had not consumed him this time. Aside from the burns on his fingers from the window latch and the cuts on his hands and arms from where he had broken through it, his body was untouched.

Diana sat with him for a long time, after. He looked peaceful.

Steve had so rarely looked peaceful when he slept.

(Had he been scared? Had he known where he was, what was happening?

Had he known he was going to die?

Diana had not even thought to fear him dying alone and scared anymore. She had let go of that worry.

Of all things, she had not wanted that for him.)

She did not know what to do with the body.

It had been easier, the times before. There was no choice, the first time she lost him—

(Just the gaping hole in her heart he left behind, just the sudden wrench of unimaginable grief.)

—and the second time there she had not had to consider anyone’s wishes but hers.

(Just Ameline, who still laid flowers on his grave.)

The two of them, they had left so little behind.

This time, they had built a life together. All of his things were mingled with hers, all of his friends were hers.

His sister had cried on the phone and asked for copies of the family photos that were tucked into a shoe box under his side of the bed. Sandy was sleeping with a sweater he had left at their house, Steve had letters for her, with stories of her father that he was going to tell her when she was older, he had already bought a Christmas present for her — they would want a grave to visit.

Former President Carter had sent her a card, he wanted to attend the funeral.

Diana did not know what to do.

(They had had a life together. Their clothes hung in the same closet. His laundry was still in the hamper. His toothbrush was still in the holder. The yogurt he liked that she didn't was still in the fridge.

The book he had forgotten to take with him was still on his night stand, half read.)

Diana had never had to have a funeral for Steve before.

(The first time she had known him, Steve had wished they more time. The second time, he had been so young, but there had been the war, and she knew he had trouble imagining that there could be an _after_.)

Maya helped, when she could, when Sandy didn’t need her. Steve’s army buddies called. His former colleagues. The former President.

(“Anything you need...”)

Diana had to plan a funeral. She had to decide what to do with his body, unscathed. Peaceful.

( _Steve twitched and muttered in his sleep..._ )

She did not know if she wanted to give him all the rites she knew she should. It would be easier not to. She would have to hide the gold tablet with the prayer for Hades, the lock of her hair, beneath a suit. She would have to wait until the last moment to put the coin over his mouth to pay his passage.

And...she was not sure she wanted to.

What if this time Hades respected her request and gave him rest, awarded him the place of honour he deserved?

(Was Hades still even _there_ to receive him? Was Charon there to ferry him across?)

What if Steve did not come back again?

(This time, they had had a future together. They had had _plans_.

She had lain beside him and pictured their _children._ )

What if he did but didn’t remember, as he had this time? What if he wasn’t _hers_ again?

(She wondered how many lives Steve might have lived before her. She had lived hundreds of years on Themyscira. Had his first life been the one where he had crashed his plane onto the island and found her? Or had he been wandering the world all during that time? Did he live those lives well, have other loves?

Or had he felt that absent ache she did when he was not with her? Never enough to drag her down but always tugging at her heart, as if he would be there if she could only look over her shoulder and see him.)

In the end, Diana gave him all the rites. If he was destined for the Elysium Fields, she could not risk him losing his way. She held the funeral. She buried him in Arlington, as he had wanted. She arranged it so that he was close to Nick.

He had earned his peace. He deserved peace.

( _“It’s not about deserve! It’s about what you believe!”_ )

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, sorry? This one was intense. I promise they'll be happy by the end of the next chapter!
> 
> I played really fast and loose with timelines here, guys. You'll just have to accept some fudging. Also, I don't know the basics but I don't know this time period super well. 
> 
> As much as I LOATHE and deplore Reagan, his administration basically continue the aid projects the Carter administration was funding. Reagan changed how US aid worked dramatically but he did it on top of what was already being funded. Aid funding was less direct (and less political) before Reagan.
> 
> The unit that Steve alludes to being briefly part of is Tiger Force, who were responsible for some bad shit during part of their time as a unit. 
> 
> Steve has PTSD in this, he just didn't have the words for it yet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third time Diana met Steve again she did not find him, he found her.

(The third time Diana did not find him, he found her.)

Diana was walking home from the market when she heard his voice again for the first time in over thirty years.

“Diana!”

She stopped but it took her a moment to turn, a moment to look. She did not believe it at first.

(Steve calling a greeting as she arrived at Maya’s; Steve bashfully getting her attention to ask her a question; Steve shouting her name as he raced across the tarmac.)

“Diana?”

She turned and he was there, trotting across the street and coming to a stop right in front of her.

Her heart was in her throat and when she spoke, her voice trembled: “Steve?”

His eyes went so tender she could hardly stand it. “Yeah, it’s me. Promise.”

“You remember?” Diana asked, her voice hoarse. He hadn’t before, not before they had even met.

But Steve nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, and he laughed a little, smiled at her. “I saw you on TV fighting some giant, ugly monster thing and it hit me like a freight train. I was sick for three days. I was lucky — half my unit had food poisoning at the time. They wrote it off as that when they couldn’t explain it, otherwise I might have been discharged.”

Diana couldn’t even process that. She was overwhelmed. He was here. He remembered.

(She had missed him and missed him and missed him.)

Steve was looking at her in concern. He leaned forward, like he was going to touch her, but then stopped herself. It almost made her sob.

“Sorry, I’m going too fast. I didn’t think—” he began.

Diana did not want to think.

She stepped forward and kissed him.

It should have been awkward, part of her wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Even with the grocery bags in her arms, it wasn’t. She kissed him like she knew him, like it hadn’t been years, and he kissed her back just the same.

“Oh,” Steve said, when they parted. He seemed dazed. “Hi.”

Diana laughed wetly. She could taste salt in her mouth. “Hi.”

“Here,” he said, relieving her of one of her bags. “Let me.”

Diana frowned, thrown off and about to protest — Steve knew she didn’t need help carrying the bags, what was he...? — before he stuck his free hand out, offering it for her to take. She looked at him, surprised, touched, and he blushed slightly, but smiled at her, nervousness playing around the edges of it.

But he was not wrong. As Diana took his hand, she realized she _needed_ to be keep some sort of hold on him. She looked at him tremulously; he smiled at her, big and bright.

Diana took him back to her apartment because she wanted to. Because she did not know what else to do. He talked to her on the way but Diana couldn’t seem to take it in, her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears.

She just wanted to touch him.

(How could this be real? He had never remembered before not like this.)

Her heart still ached for _her_ Steve, for the life they had planned, the life they hadn’t lived.

(And the boy who had died. And the man who had saved the day.)

She did not waste time when they got to her apartment. Steve barely had a moment to look around before the bags were on the floor and she was pressing him back against the wall.

She could tell for a moment Steve did not know how to react but he had always been quick and he said he remembered everything—

(Why hadn’t _her_ Steve remembered everything? Why wasn’t he given more of the good memories?

Why hadn’t they had more time?)

—and judging by the way he kissed her back he really had. His hands covered the same spots of her body they had before, as if she hadn’t missed him (missed _her_ Steve) for so many years.

“Diana,” he said, breathlessly. There was heat in his eyes. But there was concern too.

She ignored the concern.

They made it to her bedroom — she directed them there even as she kissed Steve breathless again and again. She had divested him of his shirt and he was unbuttoning her blouse when they toppled into bed together. It made it harder to get his pants off — it made her frown for a moment when he was wearing boxer briefs instead of just briefs (like _her_ Steve had) — but did not stop them.

She straddled him and kissed him and his hands slid down her back just the way she remembered and didn’t fumble at all with the clasp of her bra and it was like, it was just like...

(It wasn’t. It wasn’t _right._ )

Diana stopped abruptly and pulled away. She didn’t leave but she sat back up, still straddling his legs but...

(Steve kissing her wrists as he undid her vambraces; Steve kissing her, the rough scratch of his beard, they way they had learned to laugh in bed together.)

“Diana?” Steve asked.

She looked down at him, still sprawled beneath her. His lips were pink from her kisses and his eyes were clear.

He was looking at her with such tender concern that she didn’t know if she could stand it. She couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat. She thought she might cry.

Steve was careful not to dislodge her but he sat up. They were still so close together she could feel the heat of his body. It made her shiver.

“Hey,” Steve said. He reached out slowly, slowly enough that she could have moved away, and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “It’s okay.”

Diana had to clasp her hand over her mouth. It was the only way to keep a sob from escaping.

(Steve was there. Steve was right there.

Why didn’t it feel real? She had always missed the ones she had lost before but she didn’t remember it feeling like this, like her heart was still a cracked stone in her chest.)

“It’s okay,” Steve repeated. His hand didn’t leave her face. He moved to wipe away the tears that had leaked from her eyes, then to cup her cheek as he ducked his head to make sure he was looking her in the eye.

“We don’t really know each other,” Steve said with a sweet, slightly sad smile, echoing her own words from a lifetime ago. “I mean, you know me better than anyone ever has, I think. And I think I know you too. But you must have changed since...since the last time we knew each other. And you _know_ me and that means you always see the differences in me as well as what’s the same. I’m never exactly the same.”

His eyes were kind as he said it. It was that, that and the _understanding_ that made her break down.

( _Her_ Steve had only had glimpses of that. It had taken so much effort on his part not to just compare himself negatively.

She loved him so much still. But he couldn’t have understood, not entirely.   

It was enough that he had been himself.

Diana didn’t know what to do with this _understanding_.)

Steve held her while she cried.

(She missed him and missed him and missed him.)

—

Steve put away her groceries and made her tea.

(She tried to ignore the sound of him opening and closing all her cupboard doors. She had moved to Paris after Steve died and then again to a new apartment several years ago. There was no reason for him to know where things were. It should not have bothered her that he didn’t.)

He put it down on the coffee table, in front of where she was sitting cross legged on her couch, but then he took a step back. He took the chair across from her, with the table between them, instead of sitting beside her.

Diana was disappointed: she felt the distance like an ache.

Diana was relieved: she didn’t know what to say to him.

(There were still a few pieces of Steve’s clothing hanging up in her closet. She had packed most of them up and given them away but a few she carried with her because the idea of parting with them was too much.

She wanted to grab one of his shirts and wrap it around her as they got dressed again.

She didn’t.)

“I’m on leave for a month,” Steve told her, breaking the silence. “If you need some time. We don’t have to do this now.”

The thought of him leaving made Diana’s throat burn. She ignored the suggestion.

“You’re on active duty still?” she asked instead.

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Navy SEALs.”

Diana swallowed. He would have been in high school on 9/11, she realized. He never could avoid war.  

(She remembered his face after the nightmares; remembered him helping to plan how to lure Nazis to their deaths; remembered his desperation to see the war end without any more lives lost.

She wondered if this was some kind of final curse from Ares.)

“And you said you remembered all at once?” Diana asked. A giant, ugly monster, he had said. Doomsday? “That was...three years ago?”

Steve nodded again, and said intently. “I didn’t know how to find you so I...”

To her surprise, he flushed. “I, uh. Started looking into my past lives a bit. I knew it was real but I wanted to verify it, you know? That’s part of the reason I came to Paris.”

To visit his own grave. Diana felt sick. She did not ask if he had already done so.

“How were you so sure it was real?” Diana asked, remembering how frantic _her_ Steve had been when he started to remember.

“I, uh, looked up my — his obituary, first,” Steve said. “From 1985. And then, I might have managed to get my hands on some service records. I couldn’t get all of _his_ but the ones from the First World War are declassified now. It didn’t feel like as much of a stretch that everything I remembered was true when I could verify all that.”

Diana had eventually obtained a copy of Steve’s First World War record. It was in her safe, along with the Vietnam-era service records he had given her himself and the photo Bruce had found for her.

The idea of other people accessing them bothered her.

“I’ve actually been having dreams about my past lives since I was a kid,” Steve admitted sheepishly.

Diana’s stomach dropped. The idea of a _child_ having those memories was abhorrent. _Her_ Steve had struggled so with his alone—

Steve read the expression on Diana’s face and hastened to reassure her. “Not the bad stuff. Not even really anything to do with you. Just glimpses. Just these little bits of what my life had been like at that age in the past.”

He smiled. “My parents thought I was a really creative kid.”

His expression was so warm, so fond, that Diana couldn’t help but smile back. Steve’s parents had always been long gone when she had known him before.

“They’re good people, your parents?” Diana asked. She wanted to keep that expression on his face longer.

“The best,” Steve replied. “My mom was a fighter pilot so she’s almost as badass as you. My dad’s a teacher and just about the kindest man I’ve ever met. When I started telling them these crazy stories of a kid just like me but in the past they decided I had a hell of an imagination. My father is still disappointed I didn’t become a famous writer or something. He used to get all these books out about whatever period I was talking about so we could learn more about it.”

Diana grinned and Steve’s expression brightened at the sight of it. He seemed calm and she was relaxing by inches.

(It used to take him so long to stop shaking and calm down after the nightmares. It took him so long before he wasn’t wound tight as a drum every moment of every day.)

“But you said you were sick when you remembered...the rest?” Diana said. “It used to make you lightheaded and nauseous.”

Steve nodded. “It was like that but...you remember when I—when he almost fainted meeting Etta again? That was maybe six, seven memories downloading at once. If you multiply that by, god, I don’t even know how many lives it’s been. I think it just took a while to adjust. I was pretty out of it for a few days.”

Diana did not know what to focus on — how sick Steve had been, that he did not seem to know how to refer to his own past lives, that he remembered in _that_ amount of detail, down to how many memories _her_ Steve had remembered the first time he saw Etta again but then—

“You don’t know how many lives it has been?” Diana echoed, more faintly than she expected of herself.

After meeting him again and then again, she had wondered if Steve’s first life had been the first time she had known him. She was startled by how hollow she felt to learn that it had not been.

And Steve...Steve was reading her too well. He always had. His eyes went gentle and compassionate.

“Nothing is very...distinct before you,” Steve explained. “They’re like a movie I was only half watching, unless I really try to concentrate on something.”

“But then I met you,” Steve said. He had to pause and Diana saw how important it was to him, too. How deeply he felt about their meeting. “And it’s like everything came into focus. That whole life is sharper because of you. And the next one. And the next one.”

“In a way, it’s still like watching a movie of myself,” Steve said, guessing the concern that was growing in Diana’s heart before she had even named it. “I don’t have nightmares. Unless I try to, I don’t re-experience what I was feeling. It’s just there. It doesn’t hurt me. I’m okay, I promise.”

Diana exhaled. She tried to smile at him, though her own vision was blurred by tears. She saw Steve start to move and then stop himself, looking almost frustrated.

“Can I come sit with you?” he asked.

Diana nodded. He did not move slowly but Diana could tell he was not moving as quickly as he wished to, that he was trying to give her space. That he was willing to give her whatever she needed.

(Diana didn’t know what she _wanted.)_

He sat beside her and took her hand tentatively. Diana squeezed it and wiped away her tears. Just feeling the warmth of his presence nearby eased an ache inside her.

(Why didn’t the rest of it hurt less too?)

“I didn’t realize how hard this would be for you,” Steve said carefully. “I should have.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Diana said. This was what she wanted.

(She wanted _her_ Steve and the life they had planned. She wanted him to have grown up, even if it meant marrying Ameline or someone else.

She wanted him to have never flown away.

None of these things could be true at once.)

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said. “I know how much you’ve loved me, every time, no matter who I am. I know losing like that has to hurt.”

He took a breath. “And you don’t have to be done grieving any of those past loves yet.”

Diana held on to him more tightly. “If you’re thinking of leaving—”

“No, I won’t. I wouldn’t,” Steve told her. “I’m here as long as you want. And I’ll answer all the questions you have. Just. We don’t have to do this all at once. I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“I’ve never wanted to hurt you,” Steve added, very quietly. “And I think I have.”

“Not _you,_ ” Diana said. She could not help but think of her mother, whose heart she had broken by leaving Themyscira. Steve could have no more stood aside (let Sandy and her friend die, let his comrades be discovered and killed, let those bombs be _dropped_ ) then she could have.

It would diminish who they were to do so.

Diana did not think they would have loved each other so strongly if they were willing to do that.

But she would not deny that each absence _hurt_.

(And the last. Oh, the last seemed to hurt the most.)

“It’s when I’m left behind,” Diana said, though she did not think she was explaining it well. “That’s what hurts.”

Steve understood.

—

Steve stayed the night.

He did not leave, not even to go back to his hotel room, remarking that he had slept in worse when he stripped down to his underwear and left his t-shirt on.

Diana couldn’t bear the thought of lending him some of _her_ Steve’s clothing. She thought seeing him in it would undo her completely.

(It wouldn’t fit him. Diana could tell. There were so many reasons the idea of seeing Steve in those old clothes made her ache but she fixated on that.

It wouldn’t fit him.

 _Her_ Steve was older. His weight had fluctuated because of the times he couldn’t eat, because of the side effects of his medication. Even if they had shared a size, this Steve was an active duty Navy SEAL. He was bulkier in different places. The fit would not have been the same.

Diana couldn’t stand to think of it.)

He started to offer to sleep in her guest room but stopped when Diana blanched. They slept in her bed, side by side, not touching.

At least, they weren’t touching at first.

Diana woke twice in the night. She had taken sporadic lovers, since _her_ Steve died, but it had been some time since the last. Still, what bothered her was not that it felt unfamiliar having someone in her bed.

It was that it felt too familiar.

The first time she woke, her arm had migrated around Steve’s waist. Her chin was pressed against his shoulder and his head turned towards her. She could feel the puffs of his breath against her hair.

She had slept like that with _her_ Steve. But any movement tended to wake her because she had made herself his guardian against his nightmares.

This Steve was still fast asleep. When Diana slowly pulled away from him, he made a soft, confused noise and reached for her. But he did not wake and he settled quickly even after she was no longer touching him at all.    

Diana watched him from the other side of the bed until she fell back asleep.

The second time she woke, her hand was on his chest. It was there only point of contact, just her palm, over his heart, but it felt like the whole world.

She could feel the even thud of his heart beating.

She couldn’t bring herself to move. She lay there for a long time, watching his chest rise and fall. Slowly, she realized what had woken her.

Steve was snoring.

Not particularly loudly. Diana had lived with Etta for a time after the war ended and her snoring had required some adjusting to. Steve’s snoring was milder.

 _Her_ Steve hadn’t snored.

( _Her_ Steve had never slept on his back, not for long. Even on good nights, when his sleep seemed relatively undisturbed, he slept on his side, tension in every line of him, most often with his back to the wall.)

But, he had, as well.

Steve had, the first time she had known him. He had on the boat and she hadn’t known what to make of it. He had, for just a moment, at the camp with Napi, before Sameer elbowed him and made him turn over.

He had in the bed they shared in Veld, in the early morning, when he finally slept, with his arm tucked around her, as Diana watched the morning light slowly illuminate his face.

Diana’s eyes burned. She did not want to weep over the memory of him anymore. She wanted to see him clearly.

(It was not that easy.

But she knew the last thing _her_ Steve would want was the memory of him haunting her like a restless spirit. He knew all too well how that could fester inside a person. It would have broken his heart.

There was no version of him that would have wanted that for her.)

Diana could not mark the moment she fell asleep again. It was morning, when she woke. There was pink light coming in through the white curtains of her window as the sun rose. One of Steve’s arms was heavy around her waist and she was using the other as a pillow.

“Sorry,” Steve whispered, realizing she was awake. His voice was deeply amused. “I couldn’t manage to free myself.”

Diana’s fingers we’re laced through his, keeping him firmly in place. He couldn’t have pulled away from that, not without waking her, let alone extracted his arm from under her head.

Diana did not release him. She turned in his arms instead. “It’s all right.”

She took a moment to look at him, to actually see the differences in him. He a decade younger than Steve, as she had last known him, closer to the age he was when she had first known him. But there weren’t so many lines on his face as there had been then, nor the same number of shadows in his eyes.

She traced her fingers over his cheek, memorizing his face, this face. Steve went still and let her.

When she satisfied herself and pulled her hand back, she could see the smile start to spread slowly over his lips, see the quip forming there.

She beat him to it. “Yes, I like what I see. It is the same way you have looked for a hundred years.”

Steve laughed, his expression startled and delighted. He waggled his eyebrows at her, teasing. “Why change a good thing?”

She shoved at his shoulder and he flopped back onto the bed. She followed him and kissed him, slowly, learning him again.

(She could never forget. Would never forget. No matter how different or similar he was. Like a variation on a theme. The core of him always seemed to stay the same.)

He was more relaxed than...than _her_ Steve—

(She was not ready, did not know when she would be ready, to stop thinking of Steve as she had last known him as _hers_. She still carried him so tightly in her heart, it was still so hard to speak of him to anyone who had not known him, who wouldn’t understand.

When she had known Steve as a boy, it had been such a tragedy, all his enthusiasm and hope and life snuffed out before he had a chance to really begin.

The first time she had known had been a hero, had given himself so that others might live. It had been his purpose not just in that plane, at the end, but in his unshakeable mission to end the war.

And what was true for one had been true for both, had been true for Steve as she had last known him too. But...but he had struggled so much and tried so hard just to live again in the aftermath of the choices he made time and time again. To put others first. To continue fighting. To try to save the day.

She had believed, truly, that they had a future. She had known what it was.

Losing that was still a dull pain in her chest.)

—than _her_ Steve had been. At least at first. Towards the end, when things had gotten easier, maybe, but even then he still sometimes kissed her as if she would disappear if he blinked—

(Diana had become all too familiar with that feeling herself. She wondered if Steve could taste it on her lips now.)

—Steve kissed her now more like he had the first time he had known her, that morning in Veld, when they had had to leave but he had been so...happy. As if something had been restored to him that he had forgotten he had lost.

And when they parted, he looked up at her like he had in both the lifetimes they had been lovers. Like she was the sun, shining through unlooked for in a sky full of clouds.

Diana smiled at him. “You kissed me last night, remember?”

“Yeah, I was dazed then too,” Steve said before his voice went quieter. “You were a bit...beside yourself, last night, when we were doing that.”

“That may happen again,” Diana warned him.

Steve nodded. His eyes were calm and kind.  “I know.”

They got up. Steve pulled on his clothes from the day before — he was not surreptitious enough when sniffed the armpit of his t-shirt and made a face. Diana thought of the clothing in the back of her closet but couldn’t, she couldn’t.

She took a moment in the washroom. She thought about calling Maya, who hadn’t needed more than a moment of shaky camera footage to identify her as Wonder Woman. It had been such a relief to tell her, after communicating solely through letters for years to hide that she wasn’t aging. To decide that they should tell Sandy as well.

(Maya hadn’t been the only one. Diana had returned home to find a letter from Former President Carter — who she had only really met the once, at Steve’s funeral. He had rather obliquely thanked her for her efforts without referencing anything in specific.

But it had been rare, despite the footage. None of her colleagues had made the connection.  

It was only after Steppenwolf, when she had slowly began being more public, that questions began being asked.)

But she didn’t call. Not yet.

Diana could not decide if she was being selfish, wanting to keep Steve to herself for just a little while, or kind. Maya had loved Steve dearly and his death had hurt her deeply too. She did not know how Maya would react to him, no matter how understanding Steve was.

Steve was no longer in the bedroom when Diana stepped out of the washroom. She felt a tiny fissure of fear before she heard him moving around in her apartment.

(She knew he was real, he was here. She just had to convince herself to believe it.)

Diana took a breath and walked into her living room. Steve turned from where he was hovering near the kitchen door and smiled at her, a little bashfully.

“I was going to start making you breakfast,” he admitted. “But...I thought it might upset you.”

Diana didn’t wince but she wanted to. He wasn’t wrong. But...she was not sure it would have been a bad kind of upset.

“Plus the last time I knew you, your favourite breakfast changed from eggs florentine to blueberry pancakes about two months after I’d spent a whole weekend perfecting my recipe,” Steve continued, his smile hinted at teasing. “So I thought I should check first.”

It surprised a smile out of her. “I am partial to crepes now.”

Steve whistled. “That’s going to take some effort.”

“I am sure you will manage,” Diana said. She had learned, no matter how limited or plentiful the resources, not to doubt Steve’s cooking abilities.

Still, she paused, momentarily taken with that information. Her voice was quieter than she expected it to be when she asked:  “Did you really...?”

Steve nodded, his voice softer. “Yeah, I — he — did.”

Diana could not miss the way Steve was referring to...to his most recent past life. She ignored the pang in her heart, and the way her throat felt tight, trying to forge ahead. They were going to have to speak of that more — she was going to have to. But not now. Not yet.

Instead she said: “I can make breakfast.”

Steve’s smile was slightly incredulous. “Really?”

Diana gave him a look. Steve didn’t back down. Diana rolled her eyes.

“I can make eggs,” Diana said. They usually ended up scrambled but she _could_. “I usually have oatmeal. Or toast.”

“Diana, I’ve spent a large chunk of my adult life in mess halls or eating MREs,” Steve said, looking deeply amused. “I am not picky.”

It was meant to make her smile but it fell flat.

(If they could have just one life together without war...Diana was still not convinced Ares had cursed Steve as his final act.)

“Uh, so,” Steve said, seeing the shift in her mood. Diana had had many years to learn to mask her feelings, to present a poker face to her colleagues and the world at large. She always seemed to abandon that, with him. She did not even mean to, it just happened. “Do you have to work today? If your career kept going the way it seemed to be going last time, I’m guessing you’re pretty important.”

Diana swallowed. They had talked around the edges of making the move to Paris, the offers she had received.

“Yes, I’m the Director of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities at the Louvre,” Diana told him.

Steve grinned at her, brilliant and proud. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Diana never doubted he believed in her. It still warmed her heart to hear.  

She had already thought about calling out sick today. The thought of letting him out of her sight made her chest tight. But it was also a relief. His reappearance had been so unexpected, that he remembered, that he knew her, was making it all the more intense.

And...if she went in today she could tie up some loose strings, take some last minute vacation...

(Was that a good idea? Would they want the time away from each other?)

“If you want, and just if you want,” Steve said. “I can go get my things from the hotel while you’re at work.”

Diana nodded. It was a bit jerky and her eyes felt wet and hot again but yes. She wanted that.

“How long had you planned to stay in Paris?” Diana asked. She knew he would stay here now; she knew it was unlikely he had planned to.

Steve hesitated but he didn’t lie to her. “I was planning on five days but unless you tell me not to, I’m cancelling the rest of my trip and staying here. I’ve been to Europe before, I just...hadn’t remembered yet the last time I was here.”

Diana nodded. She wanted him to stay. Still she was curious, and dreaded, what his plans had been. “Where did you plan to go?”

“Belgium,” Steve answered, honestly. “Maybe down the coast of France, as well.”

He was, as Diana had half expected, visiting places connected to his past lives. She did not know how to feel about that or if what she was feeling was about Steve returning to those places or the thought of returning to them herself.

But it also occurred to her that there would have been easier places for him to visit and the thought filled her with dread.

“Did you visit any other places you...had been before?” Diana asked.

Steve sighed. “I went to the Vietnam Memorial, stopped by a couple other places in Washington.”

(Diana had only visited the Vietnam Memorial once with _her_ Steve. It was just before they left Washington, during the brief period between when they decided they needed to leave and when they moved New York.

Steve had been not been well. He had insisted on going but he had been unsteady all morning and when they got there it had been like he was in a trance.

He had been there before; Diana didn’t know how often. He moved unerringly to a name, clearly someone he knew, and brushed his fingers over it, then another, then another, then another. All along the wall.

Then, he stopped at Nick’s name.

Everything about him stopped. He didn’t touch it like the others, not at first. He stared at it.

He started to shake.

For a moment, just a moment, he pressed his head there, against the wall, against his best friend’s name, and closed his eyes.

Then he turned and strode — marched — away. Without another word.

Diana would catch up with him leaning over a garbage can, throwing up into it, trembling with tension. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, speak again for the rest of the day.)

Diana swallowed. The thought of him there alone _hurt_.

“I haven’t been anywhere other than that,” Steve told her. His face was wistful. “The last thing I want to do is hurt Maya or Sandy. And how would I explain it to them anyway?”

Diana took a step forward, into his space. He had so carefully kept from straying into hers. She laced her fingers with him and looked at him. She recognized that loneliness, of not being able to explain, of remembering what others couldn’t even understand.

She felt it too.

(She didn’t have to as long as he was there.)

Diana kissed him again. Softly.

She liked the look in his eyes when they parted, the way he had to blink and clear his throat before he spoke, the way he said her name. “Diana...”

Her phone buzzed, breaking the spell. Steve made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat; Diana cursed.

It was, at least, a colleague from the Louvre, not from the League.

(She would have been exasperated by Barry; she might have killed Bruce. Arthur wouldn’t have called, he would have just appeared on her doorstep.

Clark and Vic were too sensible to call at this early hour.)

But there was a problem with one of their upcoming special exhibits. It would be easier to fix if she went in, no matter how exasperating that was, even though it was what she had been leaning toward.

(No matter how much more tempting it was to stay home when she saw the way Steve looked at her, all admiration and love and impossible fondness.)

Steve was perhaps the only man in the world who would move closer to her, when he saw the annoyed expression on her face. He kissed her, quick and light, not enough to invite more, very obviously restraining himself.

“I’ll keep,” he told her. “Go fix things at work. I’ll get my things. Cancel my hotel reservations.”

It was what they needed to do. It was what Diana thought was best.

She still didn’t want him out of her sight.

“Okay,” she said.

“I could, if you want, come by later? You could give me a tour?” Steve looked a little bashful asking.

Diana shook her head immediately. She was not ready to share him yet. Not with her colleagues, not with the League, not with anyone.

She did not feel guilty about that, not at all.

(Except for Maya and Sandy, still uncalled.  

Diana did not know what she would say to them. Sandy was older than Steve was, now, she had children of her own.

She had given her second son the middle name Steven.)

Steve looked a little surprised — maybe even a little hurt. Diana ran her hands over his arms for a moment. Standing this close, she could smell him.

(How could he smell the same as the first time she had met him?)

“Not tonight,” Diana told him. “I just want you with me tonight.”

—

They had a month before Steve’s leave was over.

Diana took a week off, then tried to go back for two, before taking his last week off. She only managed to go back for one.

(She came home early and unexpectedly on the Thursday of the first week to find her kitchen a disaster, crepes of varying levels of skill stacked up on a plate on the counter.

She had laughed and been thoroughly charmed by his blush. She had kissed him and eaten even the worst of the bunch while he insisted on doing the dishes and cleaning up.

She had decided then to take the extra week of vacation.)

Steve cancelled all his other travel plans. They stayed in Paris.

(They did not go to Père Lachaise, let alone Belgium or Normandy.

Steve did not seem to mind.)

It was...very easy, being with him. Steve had always had a certain charm to him, a useful thing for a spy (resistance fighter, diplomat). But there was a warmth and an openness to him, this time, that Diana had half-forgotten from when she first knew him. Then, her inexperience with his world had made him less reticent, more willing to share of himself than he would have been with anyone else.

Now he just...he trusted her, he _knew_ her. He understood her in a way very few did.

(It was not just her, either. He was not as isolated as _her_ Steve had been, no so single-minded as when she had first known him, when he had obviously cared about his friends very deeply but had also been impatient and seen them less clearly than he sometimes should have, in his burning desire to see the war brought to and end.

In this lifetime, it quickly became clear to Diana that Steve had a network of close friends. He was not one to divide his attention when they were together but when his focus wasn’t always, solely on her and she overheard him speaking to them or his parents or his sister on the phone a few times, enough for it to be easily apparent that he was loyal and kind and loved.)

But he wasn’t wrong in saying she had changed. And he was not exactly the same as...as she had last known him, nor any of the times before.

They were overly familiar with each other and they were still learning each other again and sometimes that rubbed Diana the wrong way.

(She didn’t _want_ it to. It made _no_ sense. Sometimes she felt a fissure of annoyance when Steve didn’t act exactly as she expected him to Père Lachaise when he smiled and chatted with a shopkeeper and came away with a flower for her instead of shying away from a conversation with a stranger, unable to let his guard down so that every unexpected interaction took a toll.

As if he had not smiled at the ice cream man the first time she had known him, and smoothed the interaction before she even understood there were social queues she was missing. As if he hadn’t been just as charming then.

But, then, sometimes he put his arm around her and the warmth, the weight of it felt so close to what she last remembered, what she had longed for and missed, that it was all she could do not to step away because it was too much, too close.)

One night, at the end of second week, after Diana had given Steve that tour of the Louvre and he had made her dinner and they had sat on her balcony and watched the sunset and he had told her a story from his childrenhood that made her laugh so hard her stomach ached, Diana hadn’t been able to sleep.

It had been a good day. A perfect day.

Still, she silently untangled herself from his arms — they had stopped trying to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, they always ended up curled together by morning — and slipped into her closet.

 _His_ shirts and sweaters were hung up at the very back, behind the dresses she rarely wore and really should give away. She took what had been his favourite sweater down. The blue that once matched his eyes had started to fade even before his death, it wasn’t even close any longer, and any hint of his scent had long since evaporated.

Diana still put it on. She tiptoed out, then out of her bedroom, only turning a light on when she was in her office with the door closed behind her.

There was a copy of the photo of Steve as she had first known him, leaning against an airplane and smiling, framed on one of the shelves above it. The original was locked in her safe, with the group photo.

But there was a photo of her and...and Steve as she had last known him sitting on her desk. Their arms were around each other and there was a blur at the bottom where Sandy had just run into the frame. Maya had taken it; Steve had been laughing. They looked happy.

(Diana had photos of _him_ all over her apartment, she had one on her desk at work, she had one in her wallet — one tucked beside his once-father’s watch, their wish for more time.)

Diana took the box of his letters out. She sat on the floor and opened it.

Every letter he had written when he hadn’t been able to bring himself to speak; every one he had written her after; every note that she had been able to save, no matter how mundane, the grocery lists and the quick scrawl on newsprint that he had gone to help a friend. The torn scrap from a notebook where he had written _I love you_ that she had been using as a bookmark when he died.

( _Can’t think of how I could tell you. You would hate me..._

_I still think of the weight of his body on my back. How could I not know?_

_I don’t know why I can’t get it out of head. We stopped Bill from shooting. The kid ran away but in my nightmares..._

_Maya called. I want to see them so badly but I’m afraid I’ll scare Sandy..._

_I just couldn’t stand the_ **_smell_ ** _of it anymore..._

_I can’t tell you how thankful I am that you wake me from the nightmares..._

_Sometimes Sandy smiles and she looks so much like Nick I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cry..._

_Remind me to tell you about the time we tried to hide a frog in Tracy’s sock drawer and it backfired..._

_Don’t forget your lunch!_

_I’m sorry I can’t be better for you. I’m sorry this is happening again..._

_Have I thanked you for last night?_

_Happy Anniversary._

_I don’t know what to do..._

_I’ll be at the VVA until eight. Don’t forget to pick up milk..._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_I love you.)_

She read them until her eyes burned and his stark, distinctive handwriting blurred.

He had left so much behind; they had left so much undone.

There was a knock on the door and Steve said quietly: “Diana?”

Diana wiped her eyes. “Give me a moment.”

There was a pause before Steve said through the door, kindly: “I don’t have to come in, Diana. I can go back to bed. It’s okay.”

Diana knew it was true. If she said so, he would. He would give her the space she asked for and pretend it had not happened until she was ready.

She was never going to be ready.

“Come in,” Diana told him, wiping her cheek again. It did not hide that she had been crying.

Steve waited a moment more — Diana loved him for it — before coming in. He looked at her, looked at the letters, and sat down on the floor across from her.

He looked at the letters again and reached out, unthinking, for a moment. Then he stopped. He looked to her.

“May I?” he asked.

Diana nodded.

He took the letter closest to him. Diana saw his eyes flick over the first few lines. He smiled a little sadly.

“He didn’t think you would read this one,” Steve said, quietly. “It took him awhile to really believe you wanted to know the worst of it.”

“Did he really want me to?” Diana asked. Steve hadn’t wanted to hide things from her and sometimes he just couldn’t say them outloud. But sometimes she thought, even though the letters were addressed to her, it was more about writing it down and getting it out then telling her.

“It depended on the day,” Steve answered, honestly. “He thought he owed it to you not to hide things. But he also felt like everything about him was already yours to have.”

Diana tried to blink away her tears. It didn’t work.

“That didn’t make it any less hard,” Steve told her. He looked down at the letter again. “He had gone...I think two days without speaking, when he wrote this?”

Diana took a breath. “Yes.”

“The days all blurred together when he went...quiet, that was how he thought of it. I can’t always tell how many there were in a row,” Steve explained. “He would just...get stuck on something and it would go round and round in his head. It would paralyze him, until he couldn’t speak about it. Or anything. Writing it down helped break that cycle for him.”

Steve put the letter down. He was reverent in the way he handled it.

“You know,” he said, looking at her. “You don’t have to hide that you’re still mourning him from me. I understand if you don’t want to share it, but you don’t have to hide it.”

Diana laughed wetly. She wiped her eyes again. She recognized the look on Steve’s face. It was how she used to look, when she was stopping herself from reaching out and touching _him_ because she was not sure he could stand it.      

“It seems impolite,” Diana said. “When it’s hard, when something reminds me too closely of _him_ or it feels like I’m forgetting...I don’t want you to think I don’t care for you. That I don’t love you.”

Because she did. They always fell in love fast, maybe too fast. If they were lucky, they got to sort out the details later.

And Steve in this lifetime...it had not been long, but he felt more centred, as if he had settled into himself more, or come to terms with something vital. It felt like the best parts of him had been allowed to grow, instead of being stifled by death or war or experience or all of them.

Steve smiled wryly. “Diana, being jealous of myself feels a little ridiculous.”

Diana chuckled, just a little, and Steve’s smile widened, betraying that making her smile had always been her intent.

“It’s not a bad thing, knowing how important he was to you,” Steve said. “God, he loved you so much. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to replace that. Him. It doesn’t matter that we’re...I don’t know, different versions of each other.”

Diana tilted her head at him. Steve had stopped referring to his past lives as ‘I’ entirely since they had met.   

“You only say him now, when you’re speaking of the last time you were...here,” Diana said. “Why?”

“I think you need me to,” Steve said, honestly. “And it started to feel disrespectful. I don’t think I really realized what it meant, claiming the things my past lives’ experiences as my own. It’s just that...”

Steve made a face, as if he wasn’t sure about what he was about to say. He looked at the letters again, brushed his fingers over the nearest one. “There have always been things that come through, you know? I never had to learn French or German and I’m not great at picking up languages this time around — it would have been useful, by the way, if Sami taught me more than a few curse words in Arabic. In middle school I disassembled my grandfather’s souvenir Luger without even thinking about it and nearly gave him a heart attack. After I remembered, I talked someone into letting me take an old biplane up. I just...I knew how to fly it.”

Steve paused. “And all the things _he_ went through, all the ways he learned to cope, I feel like they helped me when it turned out I was part of another endless war, doing things I didn’t always entirely believe in.”

Diana exhaled. She felt like she had been punched in the gut. She felt angry.

“Sometimes, I think Ares cursed us,” Diana told him. “Sometimes I think he cursed _you._ ”

Steve hesitated. “You could argue that. Some people argue that most modern conflict stems from the First World War. Ares was heavily involved in the peace talks that formed the basis for the Treaty of Versailles. He could have set humanity up to be at war with each other for another hundred years.”

“But you do not believe that?” Diana asked, curious.

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted. “I think — I’ve always thought — that there’s never one person, not even one god, to blame. We’re all to blame. But that means we have to be the solution too.”

Steve paused, then added: “But I don’t think Ares is behind me being a soldier. My mother was Air Force, all my grandparents served in WWII in some capacity, all but one of my great-grandfather’s fought in WWI, I’ve got great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Union. Same for _him: his_ father fought in WWII, his grandfather in WWI. In France, his family was all Resistance, before they were taken. His father was an American soldier, his step-father was French army. The first time you knew me, my father had been a Union veteran.”

“I’m not really sure I know how to not be a soldier. Even _him_ . He had found a different cause but even before he joined the military, he thought of the Peace Corps as an alternate way of _serving,”_ Steve said, breaking Diana’s heart again, even as he continued: “Don’t you feel like you were meant to be a warrior?”

Diana considered that. Yes, she always had, even when her mother tried to keep her from it, but... “I was meant to defeat Ares.”

“Maybe the person you fell in love with had to be a soldier, then. So they would understand,” Steve said and she knew he believed it. “And that’s not...it’s not like I think I’m _doomed_ to love you. Are you kidding me? That you would love me even _once_ makes me feel like I’m the luckiest man on Earth.”

“And...I think _he_ would say the same thing,” Steve said. “He was always going to enlist, once the war started. He couldn’t stand the thought of someone else serving in his place and you...Diana, I don’t think he would have made it much longer if you hadn’t met him when you did.”

Diana did not know how she felt about that. About any of it. But she could tell Steve believed every word he had spoken.

“I need to ask you something,” Diana told him but then stopped. She did not want to; she had to know.

Steve did not hesitate this time. He reached over the pile of letters between them and took her hand. Diana took another breath and forced herself to continue.

“The last time...” _I lost you_ she couldn’t say. “In the—the fire. Did you—? Were you afraid? Did you know—?”

Steve looked horrified. “No. Oh god, Diana...”

Steve stopped and looked around. “Where’s the...?”

He mimed wrapping something around his wrist. Diana was confused and upset. She couldn’t forget how viscerally disturbed Steve had been about the Lasso of Hestia the last time she had known him, about just the idea of being compelled to do something against his will, no matter the intention behind it.

But she opened a chest behind her and pulled it out. Steve did not hesitate to wrap one end of it around his wrist. There was determination in his eyes but also such compassion as it began to glow.

“This way you can’t doubt it,” Steve said. “He thought he was going to make it out, Diana.”

Diana sobbed. Steve took her hands back, holding on tight, even with the Lasso still glowing around his wrist.

“I won’t say there wasn’t any pain because it hurt but he wasn’t scared,” Steve told her. “He was relieved that the girls were safe. He was worried about how it would affect Sandy. He wasn’t panicked. He was thinking _ahead._ He never doubted he was going to make it. He saw that window and he knew he was going to get out, that it would be okay. He was sure of it, to the very last moment. He didn’t even realize he was losing consciousness.”

“He loved you so much. You were just this bright, warm spot inside of him. He thought he would be okay,” Steve said. “He didn’t think he was leaving you, not for a moment. He died thinking he would make it out.”

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. Diana didn’t realize she had said it aloud until Steve was moving, until he was wrapping his arms around her.

“I know,” he said.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Diana said because the hardest part of it, the worst part of it, was that she knew _this_ Steve wouldn’t be here, if things had gone differently. She didn’t want that, either. “I just...I wish we’d had more time. We never seem to have enough time.”

“I know. It’s not fair to you,” Steve said. “But, Diana, please understand this. You gave _him_ more time.”

“He didn’t think he would ever be happy again. He didn’t even really remember what it was. He thought his life was already over,” Steve said. “And you...you gave him back _years._ You gave him back a future.”

“I’m sorry that was taken away from you. I know there was a life with him that you didn’t get,” Steve said. “But you gave him more time. That’s the way he thought of it. He believed he had a future again with you. He never _stopped_ believing that.”

The Lasso of Hestia was still glowing around Steve’s wrist but it he didn’t even seem to notice it. All his attention was on her. Diana had never doubted he was a good man and he still unknowingly proved it to her more and more.

She sniffled as she untangled it from around his arm. Steve’s expression let her know he had forgotten it was there.

Diana ached. It was the best Diana could have hoped for, if she had to lose _him_ , with the way she lost him, but it still broke her heart.

The first time Steve had come back to her, he was so much younger it had been clear to her from the start it was no second chance, that their relationship would be so much different from the very beginning. But that change had given her more of a buffer than she realized between the Steve she had first fallen in love with and the Steve she had last known and loved, who had broken and struggled and worked so hard to heal. Who she had planned a life with.

She had thought, in some small part of herself, that they might still get a second chance at those plans.

It had always been folly; she had known that from the beginning. Steve was the same but he wasn’t. The core of him, the parts that spoke so strongly to her soul, did not waver, but circumstances never produced exactly the same man twice.

It was a blessing and it was a curse. She did not think she would have reacted any better if Steve as she had last known him had been returned to her as he had been, only younger and with all his experiences out of place. With Maya old and Sandy grown.

That would have been cruel to do to him. Diana could never have wanted that.

It was not better this way. It just _was_.

Diana had carried Steve in her heart for over a hundred years, and then seventy-five, and then more than thirty.

She looked at the man in front of her, who carried all the pieces of them inside him too, offering her love and comfort and new chances, whatever those might be. His eyes were the same. They didn’t leave hers as she touched his face. He had always looked her in the eye when it was important, reached for her no matter if she was upset or angry or happy.

No one else did that. Only Steve.

\--

Steve flew back to California on a Friday. Diana took him to the airport. It surprised both of how hard it was to let go of each other.

(They had lain in bed together until late that morning, until it crept into afternoon, until Steve was in danger of missing his flight.

But his skin was warm and willing under her touch. His mouth was eager against hers.

She did not want him to go; he would have preferred to stay.)

“I’ll call you during my layover,” Steve repeated. His bag was already checked. He needed to go through security.

He wasn’t letting go of her hand.

Diana nodded. She stopped and tugged him closer to kiss him again. Then she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

Steve hugged her back, just as tightly. He pressed his face against her hair for a moment and inhaled deeply.

“You have to go,” Diana said, not letting go of him.

“I do,” Steve agreed, kissing her again.

Diana felt ridiculous. She felt young. But that did not stop them from hanging on to each other’s fingertips instead of pulling away.

She could not have said who stepped back first and actually cut the contact. She felt bereft; Steve did not look much better.

He took another step back and Diana knew if he hadn’t they wouldn’t have been able to keep from holding on to each other again. Then he would miss his flight and going AWOL was not actually what she wanted for him.

“I’ll call you when I land in Central City,” Steve promised, again.

“Yes,” Diana said and then, before he could leave. “I love you.”

For him, there was no hesitation. Just a wide smile. “I love you too.”

He kept looking back at her, as he went through security, to the point that one of the guards cleared her throat and rolled her eyes at him. He snapped to attention then but as soon as he was through he turned again and waved before disappearing from sight.

Diana went home. She attempted to catch up on some of the work she had been neglecting.

She did not check the clock compulsively, counting down the minutes until she knew Steve’s flight had taken off. She did not check the departures page of de Gaulle airport and stare blankly at the screen when his flight status changed from boarding to departed.

She did not get much work done. When the email from Bruce first buzzed on her phone it was almost a relief.

Then she read it.

_League business. Must be discussed in person. Jet waiting at de Gaulle._

_Will have you back in time for work on Monday._

_BW_

For one purely selfish moment, she was annoyed. She did not stop herself from slumping back in her chair, tilting her head back and groaning.

Even another hour’s notice and she could have had Steve on that plane with her.

(She ignored, for that one moment, that she had not mentioned Steve’s presence to anyone yet. She felt guilty that she had not found the words to explain it to Sandy and Maya, justified it because she thought it would be best to tell them in person.

But she was very deliberately not telling Bruce and the rest of the Justice League.

Not yet.

She wanted Steve to herself for just a little longer.)

The moment ended. Diana rubbed a hand over her eyes. She replied to Bruce, shut her computer and went to pack a bag. She was ready to go and out the door in half an hour.

She texted Steve as she was leaving. He would not receive it until he landed but they would be on the same continent. Even though it was unlikely they could meet, she wanted him to know.

—

Steve had sent several texts back by the time Diana landed, including a snap of him leaving the airport to meet a friend of his and a string of hearts. His layover was just under eight hours long, if Bruce had provided more details regarding the reason for this meeting and had not sent Alfred to pick her up, Diana would have been extremely tempted to make the side trip and arrive late.

But Alfred was waiting and it was impossible to tell how urgent it was from his bearing; the man was unflappably when he met his mind to it.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Prince,” Alfred said, opening the car door for her. “I hope you’re well.”

“Hello Alfred,” Diana answered. “I am quite well, though I would have preferred more notice for this outing.”

“I will share that opinion with Master Wayne,” Alfred said, which Diana knew meant _I told him so._

“Are the others here already?” Diana asked when they were pulling out of the airport.

“We are still waiting on Mr. Allen,” Alfred told her. There was a twinkle in his eye. “I believe he had plans for a date that Master Wayne was not eager to interrupt and, as such, downplayed the importance of the meeting.”

Diana raised an eyebrow at that. It indicted, again, that this was not a world-ending event.

And she knew Bruce...could be somewhat dismissive of Barry’s opinion, when it came to the running of the League, mostly because of his age.

Also because Bruce wasn’t above ignoring all other opinions in favour of what he thought was best, unless he was made to consider other points of view.

Diana had thought he was getting better about that since Clark came back.

It was Clark who greeted her with a smile and a hug when she arrived at Bruce’s lake house. “I hope your plans didn’t get as disrupted as mine for this shindig.”

Clark was dressed for work, his glasses tucked in his shirt pocket. Diana kissed his cheek. “I was catching up on paperwork.”

“I was supposed to cover the weekend shift,” Clark told her.

Diane winced. “More cutbacks?”

“No, no. Not since Wayne Enterprises, ah, decided to acquire a media empire and ignore the slimness of it’s profit margins,” Clark said. He did not look entirely comfortable with the idea — the ethics of the newspaperman bleeding through, although, from all accounts, Wayne Enterprises was being remarkably hands off with plethora of newspapers it had bought up after Bruce silently listened to Lois’ fury over the state of local news one night.

“Jo just went into labour a little early,” Clark continued with a half grin. “I volunteered to cover her desk and then Lois stepped in when Bruce called. I think she’s hoping she can convince him to start a new digital news organization with everyone let go in the latest round of layoffs.”

“Master Wayne has been on the phone with Ms. Lane regarding this subject twice already,” Alfred commented. “I believe he was hoping to poach some talent for Wayne Enterprises itself. Ms. Lane did not wholly approve.”

Clark and Diana grinned at each other. Watching Bruce and Lois interact was always...interesting.

“We’re still waiting for Barry,” Clark told her. “But Vic and Bruce are downstairs.”

“Has Bruce told you what this meeting is about yet?” Diana asked.

“Well, Vic knows,” Clark said. That did not necessarily mean Bruce had told him so much as Clark he had long since decided it was wise to assume Vic already knew everything. “Bruce hasn’t told _me_ so my guess is he was waiting for you.”

They exchanged another look. Bruce could be rather singular in his attention, even when it was because he decided he _liked_ someone. He wasn’t always aware when it strayed into being uncomfortable. They had both gotten a taste of that, though Clark was much more of an expert on Bruce’s tendency towards obsession both good and bad.  

Bruce was standing behind a bank of computers, watching as Vic...tore apart a section of the Fox and then soldered it back together. Bruce watched the monitor and then cursed under his breath as Vic finished before hitting a button to speak over the loud system.

“You were right,” Bruce said. “You got it.”

Vic was not close enough to say ‘I told you so’ but his sudden, restrained smirk conveyed all that needed to be said. Bruce looked annoyed and impressed.

Clark cleared his throat.

Bruce deliberately did not turn for a moment, still watching Vic finish up. “It took him five minutes to find and fix a broken relay that I’ve been trying to repair for months.”

“Well, he can talk to the plane,” Clark said. “I would say that gives him the advantage.”

Bruce waited a beat more before turning. Diana could tell it was because he was making a face and wanted to hide it. One of his businessman smiles was in place when he turned.

“Diana,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

Diana nodded. “You do not make such requests often. Or provide so little information.”

Bruce grimaced. “I was hoping to avoid this altogether but we’ve been handed an ultimatum.”

Clark frowned. “By whom?”

“The government of the United States,” Bruce said. “More specifically, Amanda Waller.”

Diana had not met Amanda Waller. Bruce had spoken of her but rarely. Diana had gotten the impression that he was trying to keep her as far away from the League as possible.

“Is this all off the record?” Clark asked, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

Bruce smirked. “Lois is already sniffing around the edges of it.”

Clark looked affectionately aggrieved. “You’ve got to stop giving her all the best leads.”

“I didn’t give her anything. I don’t control what files my employees may or may not leak to outside sources,” Bruce said. “If Alfred thinks she’s a better reporter than you...”

“Hey now,” Clark objected.

Bruce nearly smiled. Clark had, Diana noticed, managed to get the tension in his shoulders to loosen, just a little.  

“With the advantage being Superman gives you, I would say Bruce is simply levelling the playing field,” Diana said.

“It would be, if she wasn’t the better reporter than me,” Clark said easily. “And being Superman cuts in to my reporting time, sometimes, you know.”

“You can listen through walls for tips,” Bruce said flatly.

Clark looked scandalized. “Bruce! My word, how unethical.”

Clark winked at Diana. She stifled a giggle. Bruce looked like he knew Clark was joking but also half believed him.

Diana cleared her throat. Bruce pulled himself back to the matter at hand, looking aggrieved. He tapped on the intercom: “Alfred, can you get Arthur out of the kitchen? And do we have an ETA on Barry?”

There was muffled cursing in the background that suggested Alfred had been in the midst of the first task. “I believe Mr. Allen may be slightly...delayed.”

The three of them exchanged a more serious look.

“Anything we can assist with?” Bruce asked, intently.

Vic landed beside them before Alfred could answer. “He’s got it under control.”

“Hmph. Takes all the fun out of the afternoon,” Arthur said over the intercom. “I’m coming down.”

Bruce looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from sighing or swearing. He looked to Vic, wordlessly asking for a status report.

“He foiled stick up at his favourite donut shop, man,” Vic said. “They barely needed his help, let alone ours. The last thing I saw from the security camera was him taking pictures with the owner.”

Bruce looked skyward, as if asking for patience. Diana had to smother her laughter at him.

“All right, when Arthur gets down here, we’ll—” Bruce tried to begin.

“I brought snacks,” Arthur announced as he arrived. He unceremoniously dropped a tray of food in front of them. He was grinning. “Alfred said I had to share.”

“Alfred said— ” Alfred said from behind him, even as there was a red streak between them and half the food disappeared.

Barry came to a stop in one of the chairs, with his feet up on the table. He had already eaten his way through half a bag of chips and the first row of a box of cookies.

Alfred continued, nonplussed. “That Mr. Allen was on his way and likely to be hungry when he joined us.”

Barry grinned, crumbs on his chin. There was a blur and another quarter of the tray was gone: “Thanks Alfred! Mr. Podolinsky tried to give me a box of donuts but the cops said he couldn’t because they were technically still part of a crime scene.”

“Everything went okay?” Bruce asked, clearly holding himself back.

“Oh yeah,” Barry said. “Two civilians mostly took care of it before I got there. It was badass but they didn’t leave much for me to do.”

His hand became a blur as he ate another row of cookies. Clark gave Diana a bemused look and mouthed ‘Oreos?’ at her.

Diana suspected Bruce had gotten Alfred to stock them specifically for Barry.

“Do you want to tell us what this is about?” Arthur asked, reaching over and snagging a cookie before Barry ate them all. “And then Barry can tell us about how two civilians beat him to the punch. Literally.”

“Hey!” Barry protested. “And I probably shouldn’t have said civilians. They were military but not, like, dressed for it and—”

“The United States government has decided the Justice League requires a liaison,” Bruce interrupted, abruptly dragging the meeting back to order. “I’ve been attempting to dissuade them—”

“Wait, hold up, what?”

“Who in the government?”

“I’m out.”

“—but we have moved beyond that point,” Bruce said. “I felt we needed to set our terms before someone is arbitrarily appointed.”

Barry looked confused and a little nervous. Vic did not look surprised but he looked more annoyed and resigned than Diana would have expected. Arthur looked pissed. It was not unusual for him.  

They all looked like they were about to start talking over each other again.

“You should have told us before this,” Diana said firmly before the hubbub could begin, effectively silencing it.

Bruce glanced at her, glanced at all of them, before saying: “Yes.”

There was a beat of silence.

“What, exactly, do they mean by a liaison?” Clark asked, in a very level tone of voice that Diana imagined put interview subjects at ease quickly.

“Someone to report on us to the man,” Barry said. “Right?”

“Pretty sure I have diplomatic immunity,” Arthur said. “So they can go fuc—”

“From the Congressional side of things, there’s worries about oversight and respecting people’s legal rights,” Vic interrupted. Nobody looked at Bruce or mentioned that particular phase of his, which he appeared to be overcoming. “There are some reactionaries, of course, but mostly they’re interested in coordinating evacuation and recovering efforts. The President...”

They all winced. Vic shook his head and didn’t comment before tilting it in the way that Diana knew meant he was combing through information, emails, documents, memorandums, that they were not supposed to be privy to.

“The intelligence community is more interested in control us. The main push is coming from a woman named Amanda Waller. She wants to ‘bring us under control’ under something called A.R.G.U.S.,” Vic said. He whistled. “She seems like a piece of work.”

“Understatement,” Bruce said.

“But you’ve worked with her before,” Clark said, mildly.

Bruce did not flinch but something around his eyes tightened. “Does she want to be the liaison?”

“I think she wants to have an underling do it,” Vic said. “Someone she could control.”

“Sooo, what if we proposed our own person for the position?” Barry suggested. “Like Lois? Or your commissioner?”

“I need Gordon where he is,” Bruce said. “And they would never go for Lois.”

“Lois would end up in jail or in charge,” Clark said. Bruce looked contemplative. Clark back peddled. “I wouldn’t get between Lois and her work but if you want to try...”

Bruce shook his head. “Waller would never agree to someone like Lois.”

“Okay, but what if it was someone who fit into their, like, organizational structure already, but we got to them first?” Barry suggested. He sat forward suddenly, jabbing his finger in excitement. “Oh! Like one of those guys from today! Like, not them specifically, but we’ve all had someone step in and try to help control the scene after who is like, military or police or just badass or something, right?”

“No,” Bruce said.

“Sometimes,” Vic said.

“I’ve gotten in bar fights with people like that before,” Arthur said.

“Okay, but, like today, there were these two guys who were in the shop when the robbery went down,” Barry said.

Diana’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

“And they were there before I was, since I can get there in a blink but I had to hear about it first,” Barry continued.

It was Steve.

“They had _mostly_ handled it,” Barry was saying. “They had gotten the store empty and slowed down the robbers but then I got there and tied them up like _that.”_

Diana took a step backwards to answer the phone. Both Clark and Bruce gave her concerned looks. It was unlike her.

But this time with Steve was too new, and she carried too many memories from his last lifetime to ignore a call.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Steve said and despite everything, Diana had to keep herself from smiling at the sound of his voice. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

Diana frowned: “That does not fill me with confidence.”

“They were just _there_ getting coffee— “

“You know how I met Dave for coffee?”

“—and then these guys tried to rob the place— “

“We ran into a little trouble and had to, uh, intervene.”

“—threw a chair at him, Mr. Podolinsky said, and the other guy—”

“It wasn’t much, really.”

“—and one of them got shot!”

“A ricochet grazed my arm. It’s nothing, I promise. Didn’t even need stitches.”

“I distracted him while his friend bandaged him up. I jetted when the cops got there. Hey, how’s the secret identity thing going to work with a liaison?”

“I just wanted you to hear it from me,” Steve said. “I’m back at the airport now, just waiting to board. And I meet your friend? He’s...sweet?”

“Did you have a point in there?” Arthur asked, sounding amused.

“Just, if we could get someone like that on our side before _the man_ gets to them, maybe they would understand us a little better?” Barry said.

“He is,” Diana replied. She took a breath. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Promise,” Steve said. She could hear commotion on his end of the line. “I have to go. I don’t want to miss my flight. I’ll call you when I get home. I love you.”

“You too,” Diana said, aware that, while Clark was not actively trying to listen in, his head had definitely swiveled in her direction when Steve said that.

She could practically hear Steve’s smile as he hung up. She listened to the dial tone for a moment, the details of a plan already formed.

(She would reflect, later, that it would have been kinder to tell him to skip his flight.)

Diana turned back to face the rest of the League.

“Barry is right,” she told them. “I have an idea.”

—

Things moved very quickly after that. Bruce called a meeting with Waller and put forth their terms while Steve was still in the air, flying back to California.

(Steve would be surprised to find his CO waiting for him when he landed in California. He had barely even made it off the plane before he was handing him back his bag and his dress uniform.

“What the hell have you gotten yourself into Trevor?”

“Sir?”

“You’re turning around and getting back on a plane. You’re being reassigned.”

“What?”

“It’s classified,” his CO scowled. “You tangle with some superheroes?”

“I...Dave and I stopped a robbery and the Flash showed up? Steve said, mind whirling. “I met Wonder Woman in Paris?”

His CO swore. “Well, apparently they liked you. You’re in for it now.”

He hesitated. “I recognize some of the names of the people you’ll be working... with. You keep your guard up. Stay sharp. And get some sleep on the plane.”

Steve saluted. “Yes, sir.”)

When Waller responded, Bruce, Diana, Arthur and Clark went to negotiate, all wearing their various forms of armour. Diana and Arthur were no longer actively hiding their identities. Batman and Superman had been in similar positions before. Barry and Vic were the least known among them. They would keep it that way as long as possible.

Steve was shown in around the third hour of negotiations. He looked impeccable in his dress uniform and his face betrayed nothing. He did not so much as glance at Diana. He faced Waller and stood at attention.

(Diana knew she was the only one who could tell he was tired from travelling non-stop for over a day now. Steve had always been good at hiding it but she had learned all his tells a long time ago.)

Clark looked curious. Arthur, for all he protested, had a better poker face than he liked to admit and he was wearing it now.

Bruce looked hostile.

(Bruce had closed down so abruptly when Diana told them about Steve there was a violence in the sudden absence of his presence. He hadn’t left but he had become a wall.

“Are you sure we can trust him?” Arthur asked, ignoring Bruce. “No offense but just because he’s the same guy doesn’t mean he’s the same guy, you know?”

“Is he the same guy?” Barry asked. “How does that even work? Does he look, like exactly the same?”

“The scars change,” Diana said, answering both questions. “But the core of him remains the same.”

Vic suddenly spread Steve’s current service record out between his hands. It felt viscerally wrong to Diana but she tamped the feeling down. She was already fighting against her desire to keep Steve hidden, to keep him safe, to keep him to herself.

And there he was, displayed for them all to see and judge.

Barry’s idea wasn’t wrong. This would be the best way forward for the League. Diana just wasn’t sure it was the best way forward for her or Steve and he was already on the plane. She couldn’t even _warn him_.

“I don’t think anything would be enough for Waller but his record should impress her backers,” Vic said, even as he was frowning. He looked at her. “You removed the records from his past life.”

Diana had. Everything she could. “Yes.”

“Why?” Clark asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Because he was hers. Because she couldn’t be sure how or when or if he would come back. Because it hurt him to remember. Because twice now he had been so vulnerable and if someone found out and tried to manipulate him or hurt him with his past…

She would not allow that.

“Makes it easier on him,” Vic said, with a shrug. “Hell, people with common names get in trouble because their records get mixed up with someone else’s. It could have caused trouble for him, particularly since he’s military. No shockingly similar duplicate records for someone to stumble on.”

“She wanted to make it harder for anyone else to find her boyfriend,” Bruce said, banked anger smoldering in his voice.

Bruce abrupt withdrawal had felt like a void in the room; Diana’s felt like a vacuum. They had all been able to continue the discussion without him, allowing him to regroup.

When Diana suddenly became colder, there was a collective intake of breath. Barry took a step back; Arthur a step toward Bruce. The files disappeared from between Vic’s hands. Clark folded his arms across this chest.

Bruce had thought he was being kind, returning that picture to her. And he had been. But it did not mean Diana owed him anything. Certainly not the opportunity to throw more of her losses in her face.

Diana could have killed him for that. She almost had, when he thought it was only one man, one loss she was mourning.

As if even if Steve wasn’t given and taken away from her time and time again, there hadn’t been Etta and Charlie and Sameer and the grey in Maya’s hair and Sandy with children of her own and Barbara Ann’s fall.

As if the boy who bled out in her arms and the man who struggled and struggled mattered any less because she did not lay them at Bruce’s feet to justify her choices.

She met Bruce’s hostile gaze squarely. Her head had not bowed for a moment. “His life is his own, no matter what we are to each other. I was not going to have anyone interfering with that.”)

If anything, Bruce’s hostility seemed to be another selling point for Waller.

“Commander Trevor,” she said. “At ease.”

Steve changed to at-ease posture. She did not invite him to sit, though the rest of them were, and he did not ask to. “Ma’am.”

“I imagine you’re wondering why you’re here,” Waller said. She opened the folder in front of her, paging through the papers inside. She only looked up at Steve intermittently.

“Yes, ma’am. The man who picked me up at the airport said there was an interest in having me transfer to A.R.G.U.S.,” Steve replied.

“Do you know what A.R.G.U.S. is?” Waller asked.

“No, ma’am,” Steve answered.

“Good,” Waller said. She did not look at them but that did not mean Diana could not feel her watching them. “Apparently you made an impression on the Flash.”

Steve blinked. “That was nothing, ma’am.”

“You and a friend stopped four robbers before the fastest man alive could get there,” Waller said, flicking another page over. “Your friend looking for a job too?”

“No, ma’am. He’s retired. Medical discharge,” Steve said quickly and then: “I am still unsure what the details of this transfer entail, ma’am.”

Waller ignored him. “You have a pre-existing relationship with Wonder Woman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Waller asked flatly.

Steve didn’t so much as twitch, let alone look in Diana’s direction. “No, ma’am.”

Waller stared at him for a minute, let the moment run long, into uncomfortable. Steve didn’t waver. Waller closed the folder and picked it up.

“This is your contract and will finalize your transfer,” Waller said. She let it fall back to the table.

“Respectfully, I will need time to review it, ma’am,” Steve said.

Waller stood. “You have half an hour.”

She headed for the door and said, just before leaving. “You may sit.”

She left the door open behind her when she exited.

Steve did not waste time. He took the nearest chair, meeting Diana’s eyes for less than an instant, and opened the folder.

Arthur opened his mouth to say something and Diana pinched him.

Steve picked up the pen. He made several revisions, crossed a few things out, and made one or two notes in the margin but he largely left it unchanged. When he was done reading through it, he looked up.

If Diana hadn’t known him so well, she wouldn’t have been able to read his face at all.

“What are they asking you to sign?” Steve asked.

Diana had been waiting for the question. She slid the folder Waller had prepared for her to him.

Clark looked at her, surprised. Bruce huffed. Diana kicked Arthur to keep him quiet.

Steve leafed through it quickly. When he finished, he nodded and slid it back across the table to her.

Waller walked through the door a minute later. She had been gone exactly twenty-eight minutes.

Steve stood at attention when she walked back into the room. He stepped out of the way as she moved down the table. She sat, silently and read off the amendments he had made.

“Explain your reasoning for the shortened contract length,” Waller ordered, without looking up.

“It’s when I would need several re-certifications or a waiver for them, ma’am,” Steve answered. “If I fail to meet those standards, it will be easier for both parties to terminate the agreement.”

“You will not fail to meet the standards, Commander Trevor,” Waller told him, with the tone of a person who believed herself to be a god, but she did not remove the revision. She finished going through his contract but did not pass it back to him to sign.

Instead, she looked at him. “What did you think of the League contract?”

Steve did not hesitate. “It has to be redone, ma’am. Aquaman is the head of a foreign nation and Wonder Woman’s formal citizenship is complicated, but France has recognized her as a dual citizen of their nation. Having them sign as if they are Americans and under only American jurisdiction is likely to spark an international incident and may invalidate the entire agreement.”

“This was drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Gang of Eight, with approval from the President,” Waller said. Bruce shifted. That meant Waller had not been the one to draft it. “Would you like me to pass along your concerns?”

“If you think it’s best, ma’am. It won’t stand up in court as it is written,” Steve answered. “A suggestion, ma’am?”

“What?” Waller said.

“As liaison, I expect I will report directly to you,” Steve said. “From what I gathered on my contract, you are former Army. If I needed to, nominally, report to anyone else, the Head of the Joint Chiefs is Navy and the ranking member of the Gang of Eight is a former Marine.”

Waller’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly. She tapped the folder in front of her. “This will be retyped for you to sign.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve replied.

“Enough with the ma’ams,” Waller told him, getting to her feet again. “It’s Director. Or it will be soon enough.”   

She looked at them, her gaze flicked from Diana to Bruce. “You can show yourselves out. I’m sure your liaison will bring along a revised agreement when it’s finalized.”

“With me, Commander Trevor,” Waller said, without looking back at him. “Your briefing starts right now.”

\--

Waller kept Steve in briefings for twelve hours.

Diana tried to ignore Bruce’s glares and Clark’s gentle queries. She declined Barry and Vic’s offer to play video games and Arthur’s offer to get drunk. She tried to catch up on her neglected work.

(This had all been an uncomfortable reminder that there were decisions she was going to have to make about her job soon. She had been putting it off, hoping she could avoid it. But League business called her away from her work more than was sustainable and with her becoming more and more public as Wonder Woman...her colleagues — even tourists! — were beginning to make the connection.

It was only a matter of time before someone seeking to challenge her targeted the Louvre in their attempt.

She could not allow that.)

She made it three hours. Three hours and all she wanted to do was pace. Three hours of Bruce trying to bore a hole in the back of her head with his glare and Clark slipping out to tell Lois he would be awhile longer because he wouldn’t leave while he was still concerned about her.

Three hours and she snapped her laptop shut.

“Say what you wish,” she said to Bruce.

Bruce glowered and did not speak.

“I’ll start,” Clark offered, leaning forward. His eyes were kind. “You said this is the fourth time that you’ve known him?”

Diana nodded.

“When were the others?” Clark asked.

“The time before this, I met him in 1979. He was a diplomat with the Carter administration,” Diana said, feeling the ache of his loss as if it were still new. “He died in 1985.”

“Before that, I met him, as a boy, in the Second World War,” Diana said, feeling the weight of his body in her arms. “He died the same year I met him.”

“And the first time was in the First World War,” Diana said. She almost smiled, her first love reminded her the most of the one she had now. But losing him, not even having a body to bury, still stung like a thorn in her heart. “When I first came to Man’s World.”

Clark’s eyes shone with compassion.

Bruce snorted. He had acquired a glass of scotch at some point. “Your lost love.”

Bruce took a drink of it. “Doesn’t do a very permanent job of it, does he? I guess when you were worried about bringing someone back from the dead, you were speaking from personal experience.”

Clark shifted, as if he thought he might have to get between them. He had not been there to see her reaction the last time Bruce had tried to throw Steve in her face but Diana knew the others had told him about it.

Diana was better prepared for it now. “Yes, I am, though it was never my choice. Does mocking a veteran with PTSD who died saving two little girls from a house fire and a sixteen-year-old who was killed by the Nazis comfort you?”

Clark inhaled sharply. Bruce looked like he had just swallowed his tongue.

“It hurts him to remember the lives he had before. He never did as a boy,” Diana said, she was looking at Clark now. She did not look at Bruce. “And last time, it cost him to remember me. There is always a cost. I pay it. Steve pays it.”

Diana took a breath. “And Steve is not the only one.”

(They had been sitting on her balcony when he told her. Diana had explained that she had given him full funeral rites, each time he had died, because she hadn’t been able to ask if that was what he wanted before now.

“I appreciate that you don’t want me to end up in Tartarus by mistake,” Steve said. “But, if it’s up to me, I’m always going to choose coming back to you, Diana. You don’t have to keep sending Hades pleas on my behalf.”

Diana exhaled. She had guessed that. It was another thing to hear him say it aloud.

She was still absorbing that when Steve, looking back out over Paris, added lightly. “Besides, I’m not the only one who comes back.”

Diana froze. “What?”

“It’s been Etta and Maya, most often, but the others too,” Steve said. “Not as much as me, I don’t think. They might be coming back in times and places I don’t know about but...I don’t think so.”

“What?” Diana repeated. Her heart beat loudly in her ears.

She had thought...if it wasn’t just Steve...? How was this happening? How could she find them? She needed to _find them_.

It felt too big, even for Diana, who had defeated the God of War and stood fast before monsters. It was too much.

Steve did not seem upset by it like she was. He seemed mostly bemused. “I was _married_ to both of them, in lives before I met you. Not at once. In separate lives. It’s weird thinking about it now. Hell, I had a thing with Sameer one time, I think in Ancient Rome? It’s hard to tell that far back.”

“Steve,” Diana said and this time he heard the distress in her voice.

He looked at her and took her hand quickly but she could tell he was confused. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Diana choked. “That’s not fair. How many times have you suffered for me? How many times have you died?”

“I don’t...see it that way,” Steve said, a bit falteringly. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s all been roses but...I would choose this. Knowing you is worth it.”

He smiled, crookedly, sadly. “But I’m not the one who has to watch you die.”)

Bruce stood abruptly. He walked several paces away and did not look at her. “Who else?”

“Steve is the only one who has returned since I arrived in man’s world but he remembers having lives before that and people from my past who were part of them,” Diana said.

“Does he remember anyone else?” Bruce asked, something urgent in his voice, something young and scared and desperate. “Anyone that isn’t someone you know.”

Diana swallowed. “No. I have no part in bringing them back but it does seem to be connected to me. Everyone he’s known more than once has been connected to me.”

(“It’s you,” Steve said, certainly, much later, when Diana felt less like her heart might break and they were lying in bed together.  “Everyone I remember knowing more than once is connected to you. Hell, I’ve known _Barbara Ann_ in three lives and, I’m sorry, I know she was your friend, but I wouldn’t have chosen to spend time with her in _any_ of them.”

“But maybe it is just luck,” Diana said. She did not know if that was what she was hoping for or not.

Steve hesitated. “Everyone I can think of knew you in some way. If It were me or if there was any justice in the damn world...”

For a moment, he looked grief stricken. “We tend to find each other, you know? Or it seems that way. And I would have found Nick, I think, if...if he’d gotten more than one chance. Me and Maya, we would have found him.”)

Bruce stood with his back to them for a moment more. Diana thought he would speak again, could see the words building in the tension of his shoulders.

He did not. He did not turn. He walked away.

Clark’s hand found Diana’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know it can’t be easy.”

“It is not,” Diana told him, with a sad smile. Clark had experienced loss, of course, with his father, but he had not had to drink as deeply of it as Diana had. Everyone she had first known in Man’s World was gone now. They had all died and left her behind.

Arthur ambled into the room and sat down beside her, not even pretending that he hadn’t been eavesdropping. “So how many go rounds have I had?”

Clark huffed, unsure whether to be amused or surprised. Diana snorted inelegantly.

“You would have to ask Steve,” she told him. Then, considering. “I think the powers of your own people may mean you are not affected by whoever returns Steve to me. Though we have gods in common, on your mother’s side, so perhaps you are.”

“Relatives huh?” Arthur said, with all the wisdom of a man whose dealings with his own had been...fraught.

“That is the most likely explanation,” Diana agreed. “Whether it was meant as a blessing or a curse, I do not know.”

“A blessing, I think,” said Clark, who may have had fewer losses but who had sacrificed himself.

“Seems like it will be for us, anyway,” Arthur said with a grin. “Your boy caught on to the diplomatic immunity thing pretty quick.”

“He has had more experience than Waller understands,” Diana said.

“Good thing you removed those records,” Arthur said, as he clapped her on the back and got up. “Come on. Stop moping. Let’s go watch Vic kick Barry’s ass.”

“At what?” Clark asked.

Arthur grinned and spread his arms out. “Does it matter?”

He ambled away but clearly expected them to follow.

“Bruce will come around,” Clark said, more quietly. Diana looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Begrudgingly, maybe. But this is what’s best for the League. He won’t sabotage that.”

Diana did not think he would either, not in the end. But it had not been his idea, and he could not control the circumstances, and Bruce struggled with that.

It was unfair. Bruce had no reason to want to keep Steve from this.

Not when the only people who stood to lose from it were Diana and Steve himself.

“We would not let him, if it came to it,” Diana said. “Bruce is not the one with any reason to want to keep Steve from this.”

Clark looked at her with sympathy. He was well aware what it was like to love someone who willing went into dangerous situations. It was always for the right reasons but that did not make the threat of losing them any easier to bear.

And Diana had lost Steve three times already.

“Why did you?” Clark asked, because Diana could have stayed silent. She could have said nothing and they likely would have agreed with Barry in principle but not gone out of their way to find the man who helped stopped a robbery.

They never would have known. She could have kept quiet, kept Steve to herself. She could have waited out the rest of his enlistment period with white knuckles and asked him not to re-up. He wouldn’t have, if she asked.

But he would have found another way to join the fray. He always would. She would not love him so much if he was not so willing to stand up and do what was right, no matter the cost to himself.  

“This is the best path forward for the League,” Diana said. “And I knew it was what he would choose, if I had had time to speak to him about it beforehand.”

That was at the heart of it. Diana had always respected Steve’s choices, even when they took him away from her. She would have liked to have discussed this before Waller got her hands on him, or been able to speak to him after it was presented to him, but she trusted him. Steve would make the right choice, even if it was hard.

That did not change.

“Are you coming?” Arthur called. “Stop moping! Barry’s losing!”

“I am not!” Barry replied, outraged. “Hey! That’s cheating! Don’t distract me!”

Clark smiled. “They are a good distraction.”

“They are something,” Diana agreed.

For a few hours, she let Barry and Vic and Arthur distract her. She ignored the anxiety that had settled under her skin and made her want to pace.

Evening fell. Clark went home to Lois, looking guilty when he left. Arthur got in to Bruce’s good booze and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Alfred to get drunk with him. Barry fell asleep on the couch. She went through Steve’s files with Vic, for a time, trying to rid herself of how wrong it felt, sharing him with anyone, before Vic went home to check in with his father, promising he would be back as soon as the security feed outside Waller’s compound showed Steve leaving.

Bruce had not reappeared.

Diana knew she would not sleep. She paced instead.

Waller was doing this, keeping Steve so long, simply as a show of her power. Steve had been travelling for nearly a day by the time he landed in Gotham. It was absurd to keep him in briefings for so many hours. He could not be at his best.

That was undoubtedly what Waller wanted.

“You know you won’t be able to keep him safe this way,” Bruce said, from behind her.

He was less drunk than Arthur had been though he had clearly been drinking. Arthur had an exuberance that carried him along in people’s good graces when he was drunk.

Bruce did not have that.

“No. He’s more at risk this way,” Diana said. “If my goal had been to keep him safe I would have kept him hidden from you for as long as I could.”

“You were already doing a bang up job of that,” Bruce said.

Diana stiffened. “I will not apologize for wanting _a month_ to reacquaint myself with him.”

“Would that have been all the time you took?” Bruce asked. He sounded...wary still, but honestly curious too. Diana kept seeing glimpses of something quietly yearning, and bewildered in his face, though he tried to hide it.

Diana forced herself to consider the question honestly.

“That was all the time we had,” Diana said. “I would have told the League when it became relevant. Steve’s leave was over. If we had had longer, I would have taken longer.”

Bruce nodded and fell silent for a long moment, looking out over the lake. It was not a comfortable silence, though it might have been once.

“You could have told me it wasn’t just...once,” Bruce said. “That you didn’t...hide from the world for a hundred years over a guy you knew for a week.”

Diana wanted to ask if Bruce thought that would have kept him from using Steve as a cudgel against her, tried to invoke his memory to shame and manipulate her. She bit back that retort because it would only make him retreat again, only convince him in his own mind that he was right, that Steve was some kind of weakness.

“That should not have mattered,” Diana told him. “It was never about one man. It was about the collateral damage we leave in our wake if we are not careful. I have never stood by and allowed a tragedy to occur but I do not want to inspire men to battle. I want them to choose peace and they must choose that themselves.”

“They won’t,” Bruce said, because he could not imagine it.

“Would you have me try to impose it upon them?” Diana asked. “You would be the first to rise against me if I did.”

Bruce didn’t deny it. Diana could see him trying to form another argument, to convince her to be what _he_ wanted her to be, what he was not willing to be himself. It was not an argument she was interested in having. He could not seem to understand that she was not willing to become her brother, even a benevolent version of him to be worshipped.

Steve understood it. That was why she trusted him with the League.

“Besides,” Diana continues. “If I had told you that it was possible for Steve to come back, you would have tried to find him.”

Bruce looked almost wounded but again, he did not — could not — deny it. “I would have found him _for you._ I wouldn’t have approached him before that.”

“That is not the point,” Diana said. She was not surprised that Bruce didn’t understand. “His life is not _mine_ to play with, Bruce. I would not _force_ some contrived meeting with him.”

Bruce looked stunned. “You could have met him years ago.”

“When? Before he remembered me? Perhaps before he joined the navy, to tell him not to and keep him out of harm's way?” Diana asked. She shook her head. “I will not manipulate him, no matter how noble my intentions. His choices must be his own. I will not rob him of that.”

“And if you never meet at all?” Bruce asked, bewildered and intent, as if he could not believe her and had to prove her wrong. “How long would you wait?”

“He lived a dozen lifetimes while I was on Themyscira, waiting for me, though he could not know it. If we do not meet in one lifetime, we will meet in the next,” Diana told him and meant it, though even the thought made her heart ache.

(She wondered sometimes if she had already missed one of his lives. There was a gap of several years between the first time she had seen Steve die and when she had met him the second time. After that, his reincarnations seemed to follow swiftly after his deaths.

She wondered if in those scant years, Steve had been a child somewhere, in a time when children died often and young, that she had never know.

Steve did not remember it, if it was so, but Diana still wondered.  

What age would he have had to reach for the memories to take hold? A newborn did not remember. Would a child of three? Five?)

“I cannot explain how we are drawn together but we seem to be,” Diana said, admitting: “It is not as early as I would like sometimes.”

(She thought of Steve as she had last known him. If she had met him earlier, could she have helped eased some of his pain more quickly, not let it become so entrenched inside him? Or would he have refused help then and never let her reach out to him at all?)

“But it is time he _must_ have,” Diana said. “I will not take his choices away. There is no choice if I am _stalking_ him from the moment he is born.”

Bruce looked like he didn’t believe her. He looked like he _couldn’t._

(Diana knew — they all knew now — about the lost young men whose anger and suffering Bruce gave a purpose. They never spoke of it, or the one he had lost, but they knew.

Bruce gave them the room to forge their own paths, when that became what they wanted. He let them go.

But he did not stop keeping tabs on them.)

“That is a lot to leave up to chance,” Bruce, who left nothing up to chance and was tormented by the things outside of his control, said.

Diana knew Bruce couldn’t understand that. But she had seen what exerting such control would mean, knew from tales and examples and all the failings of the gods. She would not make Steve into a plaything instead of a person. It went against everything she believed and was the surest way to lose him for good.

“It does not feel like chance,” Diana said. It had never truly felt like chance. Meeting Steve always felt like it had been destined.

(Diana tried not to believe that meant losing him the ways she had was destined too.)

Bruce looked at her sharply, yet still somehow hesitant. There was something he wanted to ask her but he was not sure he wanted the answer.  

Diana did not make him ask it.

“I am not the one bringing Steve back,” Diana told him. “It is not within my abilities. I do not know who is responsible or how it occurs.”

 _I cannot bring your parents or Jason back for you_ , she left unsaid.

Bruce’s face did not change. He did not allow himself to hope much so it was quieter when the faint ember of it died inside him.

Maybe that was why she volunteered: “I struggle each time with giving him funeral rites and asking Hades to reward him by granting him entrance to Elysium. Because I do not want to lose him. There is never enough time. But he should not be punished for that.”

Bruce’s jaw clenched and he looked away. Diana wondered who he was thinking of.

She was sorry that he had no one to console him.

“He’ll be good for the League,” Bruce said. It was a question and it wasn’t.

Diana thought of Steve as she had first known him: his determination to do the right thing, his tactical mind, and all the skills he brought to bear as a spy. She thought of the stubborn boy she had know, his cunning and his goodness, his loyalty. She thought of Steve as she had last known him, the brilliance that shone through even during the worst of his suffering, his doggedness, his compassion. His willingness to sacrifice himself for others.

She thought of how all those things overlapped in him, each time she had known him.

She thought of the man she had met a month ago and come to know.

“Yes,” Diana answered, simply.

—

Steve arrived at League headquarters, formerly Wayne Mansion, just before dawn.

Vic’s watch of the facility meant he and Diana were there to meet him. Bruce had stayed below, in the secure passage that lead back to lake house. He had refused to set foot upstairs on the even off-chance the driver Waller sent caught a glimpse of him; Diana refused to give in to the absurdity of him putting on all his armour for all of five minutes.

Besides, someone had to be responsible for waking Arthur and Barry. And calling Clark.

Steve looked incredibly composed given that he been in marathon meetings with one of the most terrifying people in the US government. His dress uniform was still immaculate. Diana doubted anyone but her would have noticed how tired he looked.

She handed him a travel mug of coffee before she had even greeted him.

Diana saw the way he glanced at Vic out of the corner of his eye. She saw the way he pulled himself back and forced himself to stop analyzing every moment and move. She was all too well acquainted with the way tension no one else noticed released. The way he changed the way he stood and in the corners of his eyes. She had seen it a hundred times, in another lifetime.

“Hi,” Steve said, taking it. He took a too big gulp and winced as he burned his tongue but quickly took another. “Thank you. Sorry to keep you waiting. It’s been an...interesting evening.”

He was leaning towards her, just slightly, as if he wanted to take a step closer and greet her properly but wasn’t sure of what boundaries to maintain right now.

It made Diana want to kiss him.

Instead she snorted at his understatement. It made Steve grin.

“Twelve hours with Waller is no one’s idea of fun,” Vic commented.

“I think I spent about three of them waiting in empty conference rooms,” Steve said, mildly. “And I’m a Captain now, so that took a bit of time, although less than I was expecting.”

Diana intensely dislike the idea of Waller playing those kinds of games with him. Steve, as if sensing her anger, took the step closer he had been hesitating to take. He didn’t touch her but he was in easy, comforting reach.

They were going to have to have a conversation about working together, Diana realized. They hadn’t had to do that before.

This had all happened too fast.

“Let’s not keep you waiting any longer, then,” Vic said.

Diana took Steve’s hand as they made their way down to the tunnel to meet Bruce. With Vic walking in front of them, he chanced leaning in to kiss her cheek.

“I know the rules with Waller,” he said quietly. She could tell by his slight frown that she was assuming Vic could hear him. “Not sure how to proceed here.”

“Think Sameer, Charlie and Napi,” Diana told him.

Steve looked at her, his expression soft and fond for a moment. “I think that’s who they are to you.”

Diana did not know how to respond to that or have the time to do so. Steve let go of her hand as Bruce came into view, standing stock still at the tunnel entrance.

He looked at Steve, then looked at the compact duffel he was carrying over his shoulder. “Anything else?”

Steve didn’t bristle but Diana could tell a part of him wanted to. “No. Short notice.”

“You’ll fit then,” Bruce said. “Diana can drive.”

Then he got on his motorcycle and drove off.

Diana could have rolled her eyes out of her head.

“You get used to him,” Vic said, clapping Steve on the shoulder in a friendly way. He smiled at Diana. “I’ll take a picture of his face when I pass him for you.”

Steve managed to keep a straight face as Vic lifted off the ground and took off flying down the corridor. Barely.

“It’s in his file that he can do that but it’s another thing to see it,” Steve said, shaking his head.

It took them both a moment to realize that they were alone together. Steve huffed, smiling sheepishly, and looking, for the first time, a little overwhelmed.

He might have said something, admitted as much, if Diana had not stepped forward and kissed him. His arms wrapped around her waist instinctively and she felt him relax more fully, shedding, at least for a moment, all the guards he had to put up when meeting with Waller.

“I’m sorry,” Diana said when they parted. They were still standing in each other’s arms, heads bent so close together, she could feel him breathing. “I know this was sudden. I did not mean to spring all this on you.”

Steve hesitated, just for a moment. He did that sometimes, unsure of what to say, not wanting to hurt her and not wanting to lie. They loved each other, fiercely and in an instant, as they had but hadn’t realized the first time they met, but they were still relearning each other.

But those moments of hesitation were getting shorter and shorter.

“It’s not how I would have wanted things to go,” Steve admitted honestly. He made a face. “I almost said no when they said they were bumping me up to Captain — I don’t feel like I earned that yet — but Waller looked like she might derail the whole thing if I did so...”

He looked disappointed, like he had been cheated of something that should have made him proud.  Diana hated that.

She touched his face. “I’m sorry. This is not what I would have chosen either.”

Steve smiled, a little wryly. “I got the impression that you found out abruptly too.”

“This was not how I planned to spend my weekend,” Diana agreed.

Steve chuckled. He kissed her this time, bridging even that small gap between them.

“I’m not complaining about the end result,” Steve promised. “I’m glad you thought of me.”

“If this must be, you are who I most trust for the job,” Diana told him.

“I’ll do my best,” Steve promised.

Diana had never doubted that.

She already had the rest of the League half convinced of the same. But they needed to finish that, or at least properly introduce Steve to everyone. Diana knew that. She still hesitated.

“When was the last time you sleep?” she asked him.

“On the plane back from California,” Steve told her.

Diana raised an eyebrow at him, a little surprised. Steve shrugged.

“I wasn’t sure what I was heading into. Seemed like a good idea to be well rested,” Steve said. He smiled. “I learned a long time ago to grab whatever sleep I can whenever I can because when you get to where you’re going there’s not going to be time for much.”

It made Diana frown. She had known that, theoretically. Steve was a Navy SEAL. He hardly had a nine to five job. Just...she remembered him older, hollow-eyed and restless, because he had never been able to escape that, even when he tried to leave it behind.

“Hey, I’m okay,” Steve said, softly, as if reading her mind. “Promise.”

Diana knew that, she did. She had just spent a month with him in her bed. He slept remarkably soundly, though he tended to wake early and could be alert at a moment’s notice.

“If you’re sure,” Diana said.

“I’m not going to say no to more coffee,” Steve said. He grinned at her look. “Hey, it’s good! I’ve had enough canteen coffee in my life for it to qualify as torture. I take the good stuff whenever it’s on offer.”

“There is more at the lake house,” Diana told him, deeply amused. “We should not keep them waiting much longer.”

“I imagine you guys had a long night,” Steve agreed but then, he paused. “Uh. How are we getting there?”

Diana had the great pleasure of introducing Steve to the cannibalized former Batmobile Bruce had modified to shuttle any non-flyers between the manor and the lake house. It was not nearly as impressive as Bruce’s other vehicles. Steve’s eyes still took on a certain, reckless gleam that Diana recognized as soon as he saw it.

“Can I drive?” he asked her, immediately.

“Can you?” Diana asked, curious. Bruce’s modifications were not always entirely intuitive.

Steve needed two comments from Diana and exactly six and a half minutes before he figured it out. Diana did not know whether Bruce would be annoyed, impressed or both.

Walking into the lake house, into the noisy rush of Barry bouncing around the room and Vic acting as if he did not have just as much exuberance hidden inside him, of Arthur grumbling goodnaturedly and Clark looking fondly amused and Bruce glowering in a corner, trying to mask how deeply he cared about them all, Diana felt a strange nervousness. She wanted them to like Steve and for Steve to like them.

She thought the rest of the League was predisposed to like Steve. Barry already liked him; he had impressed Arthur. Vic had been warrier but Diana could tell already warming to him. Clark had liked him from the beginning, if only for her sake.

And Bruce...Bruce did not like anyone on first meeting. But he did not dislike Steve as intently as he disliked some people initially.

Steve was a little more reserved with them than he was with her. He wasn’t wrong when he said they were her friends and comrades, as Charlie and Etta and Napi and Sameer has started as his. She had told him stories of them, of course, but he didn’t know them, not yet. He was professional but he was friendly.

There was room for growth on all sides but the roots of this idea, this wild, unplanned for idea of hers, had taken hold.

 _This is going to work_ , Diana thought and smiled, joy eclipsing her misgivings, if only for a moment.

When Steve caught her eye, he smiled back, unable to help himself.

—

It did work.

For a time.

Steve worked well with the League. Steve and Arthur immediately got along disturbing well. Barry was a little shy at first, because he felt awkward about their first meeting but Steve worked to put him at ease. Clark was friendly and Vic was professional but Steve put the effort in to develop friendships with both of them.

Bruce was...trickier. Steve never overstepped with him but was careful, as well, not to let it show how...ginger he was being with him.

Diana wasn’t sure Bruce didn’t know what Steve was doing but he did not acknowledge it. They were cordial. They respected each other.

Waller wasn’t...always entirely happy that Steve didn’t serve solely her interests. But he didn’t serve solely theirs, either. It was what he argued about with Bruce the most.

It wasn’t about Waller’s goals or about theirs, not specifically. Steve did what he always did: what was right. And he made sure he was keeping an eye on the bigger picture when they might have been prone to tunnel vision.

It worked.

But Steve was a mortal man, serving alongside superheroes. It was inevitable that someone would notice.

(Diana should have known. She had already foreseen it, had put in her resignation with the Louvre because of it.)

Diana wasn’t there, when he was taken.

(She never seemed to be there, when it happened, when she really needed to be.)

He had been in Central City when it happened. A new speedster had appeared and is seemed like he was out to get the Flash. Steve was nominally there to liaise with local forces but mostly he had been trying to help Barry figure out the identity of the new speedster before he did any more damage.

And then he disappeared.

(Diana didn’t know about it for hours. Barry didn’t _say anything_ when Steve didn’t turn up when he said he would, embarrassed and hurt because he had assumed Steve was doing something more important. It wasn’t until Waller had called _Bruce_ , coldly apoplectic that Steve had missed a phone meeting with her and ready for his head to be presented to her on a platter, that anyone realized he was _missing_.)

His hotel room showed that Steve had put up a fight but there were no _clues_. His laptop and phone were missing but neither Bruce nor Vic could track them.

He was just gone.

Barry would hardly look at her, he felt so guilty. Diana tried to be kind but knew the attempts she made to assuage his guilt rang false. She did not blame him but it felt as if her heart had been hollowed out and replaced with ice. There was an ache in the back of her throat that threatened to choke her if she dwelled on it too long.

(She had not been there again. She had lost him, failed him, again. She shouldn’t have brought him in to this, she should have kept him safe.

She wanted more time...They had hardly gotten to _start_ this time. It hadn’t even been a year. How could she have already lost him?)

For a week, they found nothing.

Then David Graves tried to bring the fight to them, lured them to where he was strongest and beset them with their worst fears, their lost loved ones, and sought to release the demons that controlled him on the rest of the world as well.

It was Steve who broke his spell in the end.

Steve who managed to free himself and shot Graves from behind. It was only a glancing blow but enough.

Steve could not be a ghost tormenting Diana and a living man, barely able to stay on his feet but looking straight at her.

Diana saw red. She withheld nothing as surged forward to attach Graves, her only thought to get him as far away from Steve as possible.

The Asuras’ ghosts turned into monsters. They were all of them used to monsters.

When Graves was defeated, Diana left him and his pleading with Clark and Bruce because she could not promise she would not give him the death he so ardently desired.

Steve was alive. Steve needed her more than she needed to avenge his suffering.

He had collapsed to the floor of the cave, by the time Diana got to him. His eyes were closed but even from a distance Diana could see he was breathing.

Vic and Barry were already there. Barry was crouching next to him with Vic standing above them both, as if on guard.

Barry looked up as she approached. He looked beside himself with worry.

“He didn’t recognize me,” Barry said, his voice plaintive. He looked near tears.

Diana did not need the Asuras’ attacks to feel as if she had been frozen.

“He did,” Vic said, quickly. “He did recognize you. It just took him a minute or two.”

Diana could not think of what that might mean. She knelt beside him. His face was so bruised and bloody she hesitated to touch him.

“Steve,” She called, gentle but firm, her fingers alighting gingerly near his temple.

Steve’s eyelids fluttered, then opened a crack. Diana felt almost dizzy when she saw recognition in his gaze. He tried to swallow and pressed his lips together uselessly, as if he wanted to speak but his mouth was too dry.

“It’s all right,” Diana assumes him, hurriedly. “You’re safe. Our foe is vanquished. We’re going to move you soon. You don’t have to speak.”

(She remembered the way he would go silent for days in another lifetime...)

Steve gave her a tiny nod and then winced. He made no sound but he closed his eyes against the pain.

“His wrist is broken,” Clark said from behind her. “And some of his fingers. Try to keep it stable.”

Diana didn’t look at him. “Is he bleeding internally?”

Clark hesitated. “There’s nothing...acute.”

Diana felt sick, and worse still as Clark hastily added. “I can take him. I’ll be faster.”

Diana nodded, numbly. She touched Steve’s face again but this time he didn’t wake. She swallowed and stepped back, letting Clark, very carefully, gather Steve up.

She felt a twinge of relief when Steve roused momentarily, even if it was to gasp in pain, when Clark adjusted his hold so that Steve was secure as possible. Her stomach dropped when she saw the confused look in Steve’s half-closed eyes. As Barry had said, there was a moment, more than a moment, when she was sure Steve did not know who Clark was, before Clark disappeared in a streak of blurred blue and red.

Diana did not arrive at the hospital much behind Clark but it was long enough that they had already taken Steve into surgery when she got there.

Diana sat down in her armour, with her sword and shield, and she waited.

Clark hovered as Superman until Arthur and Barry turned up, out of their armour. Clark came back with Lois. Vic kept sending updates of Steve’s vitals to her phone. Bruce caused a minor stir when he arrived, made it clear that he would pay for anything the government didn’t cover and stood nearby for awhile, looking like he didn’t know what to say.

Diana did not move until the surgeon came out to speak to them.

“He’s going to be fine,” we’re the first words she said.

Diana felt lightheaded with relief for a moment, even as the doctor went on to explain his injuries. As Clark had said, his wrist and three of his fingers were broken. So was a bone in his hand and several of his toes. His orbital bone was fractured as were three of his ribs. The main rush into surgery when he had arrived had been because his lung had collapsed as Superman raced him to the hospital but they had also had to repair several, small internal bleeds in his stomach.

They were all injuries he would recover from but almost all of them could have killed him.

Graves had tortured him half to death to get to them.

Diana wanted to be sick but she did not have time for that. In the face of Wonder Woman, the hospital did not enforce the family-only visiting rules while Steve was in the ICU. He was still unconscious, when they showed her to his bedside. They wanted to keep him unconscious for at least a day more.

He looked terrible. His face and neck were badly bruised, the mottled purple and blue disappearing under the white cut of the white hospital gown. The bulk of bandages pressed up against the thin fabric, until a hospital blanket covered even the hint of them. There was an oxygen tube going into his nose, IVs and monitors taped down to the hand that wasn’t immobilized in a cast, and another tube disappearing beneath the blankets.

Diana could not hate it, any of it, though she knew Steve would.

It meant that he was still alive.

(Diana had never seen him in a hospital before. She had collected his body from the morgue, the last time. His body had been unscathed, then, except for his hands. It had felt so wrong, so false, the way he looked so peaceful.

He did not look peaceful now. None of the machines or tubes or medical equipment surrounding him were peaceful. The livid bruises on his face and the cuts on his lips and his knuckles were not peaceful. Even the sedation seemed forced.

Diana remembered what he had looked like, peaceful, as she prepared his body for burial.

She had hated that more.)

Diana could not take either of his hands. She laid hers on his forearm, beyond the cast. The monitors beeped steadily. He would not wake for at least a day.

Diana leaned closer.  

“I’m here, Steve,” she told him. “I’m here.”

Nothing short of the world’s end would have moved her before he woke.

\--

Steve woke in stages over the next 48 hours.

Diana did not leave his side.

(His parents arrived just after they began lifting the sedation. It was a strange meeting  made worse because Steve was literally between them but still not _there_ to make the introductions.

Steve’s parents had never been alive for her to meet before.

Diana had no idea what to say to them when they arrived in the doorway of the private room Bruce had arranged, his mother in the lead, her streaked-white blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun and her mouth a severe, flat line.

In this lifetime, Steve got his bright, blue eyes from her.

His father was more rumpled. He blinked at her behind a pair of bifocals, looked at his wife and said: “I told you she would be here.”

His mother sniffed. She hadn’t looked away from Diana.

“Did no one think to bring you a change of clothing, dear?” she asked. “Henry...”

“In a moment, Hellie,” Henry said. He scouted around the other side of the bed so that he could lean over Steve and kiss his forehead. His eyes glistened when he pulled away, and he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes. “Oh kiddo.”

Diana swallowed. “I am sorry, Mr. Trevor. Col. Trevor. We didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Helen’s been shot down twice. Allie’s been injured god knows how many times,” Henry said, even as he smoothed his son’s hair back. “It’s hardly the first time Steve’s been hurt, either. I’m the only sensible one in the family.”

“You married me. That’s hardly sensible,” Helen said dryly but fondly. “Go find her some clothing. You can use the bathroom in here when he comes back, dear. You can leave the door open so you don’t feel like you’ve left. Henry will stay out in the hallway.”

Henry kissed his wife on the cheek before he slipped out. “Marrying you is still the best choice I ever made.”

“Mine was insisting on the back up chute before that second crash,” Helen said.

She sat next to Diana when her husband was gone and rested her hand on Diana’s arm, just for a moment. Diana understood at once how much she should value the gesture.

“We’re old hands at this, you see,” Helen said. The severeness of her clothing and expression — she had been a career fighter pilot when such things weren’t thought suitable for women — did nothing to hide the same kindness in her eyes that Diana saw in her son’s.

Diana’s eyes stung and her throat felt tight. “Thank you.”

Helen smiled at her. It was a thin smile but it was genuine.)

Steve shifted and his eyelids fluttered periodically for nearly an hour before he managed to open them the first time. Diana leaned forward immediately, she could not help herself. Steve registered the movement and tried to focus on her but he was clearly struggling, one of his eyes still swollen shut.

“Di...?” He whispered, his voice hoarse from being intubated during his surgery.

“I’m here, Steve,” Diana said, her voice thick, so much so that it surprised her. “I’m right here. You’re all right.”

Steve tried to shift but his body clearly wasn’t obeying him well, still heavy with the remnants of the sedation and the painkillers they had him on. He looked to her, trustingly. “Okay?”

Diana knew immediately what he was asking. “We’re all fine. We stopped him. No one else was hurt.”

Steve sighed and stopped trying to move. Diana felt her eyes well with tears. The only one who had truly been wounded was him.

Helen leaned forward, into Steve’s limited line of sight, smiling tremulously. “Gave us a scare there, Steven. You might have your sister beaten with this one.”

Steve stared. Diana was surprised at the momentary blank look in his eyes, the way Steve seemed to be searching for something...but then he blinked and blinked again and his voice sounded too young when he said: “Mom?”

Helen touched his arm and Steve let out a shuddering breath. Henry was wiping his face with his handkerchief again.

“Right here, sweetheart,” Helen told him, calm and in full control. It was reassuring. It made Diana long for her own mother. She completely understood why Steve’s bottom lip wobbled.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” Helen said, trying to keep Steve’s scattered attention.

Diana could tell Steve hadn’t even considered that. He struggled to think, opened and closed his mouth twice before finally managing: “Thirsty?”

By the time they checked if he could have anything and Henry came back with a cup full of ice chips, Steve was asleep again. The doctor told them it was normal. That it would probably happen a few times while the sedation wore off completely, that Steve probably wouldn’t remember the first few times he woke up and that he would need a lot of rest in the coming days and months.

Diana still felt tense as the night wore on and Steve woke intermittently to have nearly exactly the same, brief conversation with them before falling back asleep, interspersed with terrible coughing fits that left them all on edge. At least, after the first time, they had the ice chips ready.

By dawn, Henry had fallen asleep on the chair that folded down into an uncomfortable bed in the corner, his feet sticking off the end. Helen was asleep in the chair on the other side of Steve’s bed, her head tipped back, snoring quietly.

Diana had not slept. The rest of the League kept texting her, asking her what they could do.

But there was nothing to do yet, not until Steve woke up properly. Not until she felt comfortable letting him out of her sight.

She sent a quick reply to Clark, updating him by saying there was no update, and when she looked up, Steve was looking back at her. _Really_ looking back at her.

He tried to smile and winced instead. Diana quickly leaned in as close as she could to him.

“Hey,” he mumbled, hoarse and quiet. “World saved?”

If Diana hadn’t been so close to tears, she might have laughed. “Yes. Everyone is fine but you.”

“Downside of the job,” Steve said. The joke threw her off guard for a moment, even as Steve managed to actually look around. His voice went shaky and relieved all at once. “My mom’s here.”

Diana smiled for him, stroking his hair. He didn’t need to know how close she was to falling to pieces, not when he was practically in pieces himself.

“They got here last night,” Diana told him.

“Not how I wanted you to meet,” Steve managed, his voice dropping to a raspy whisper.

Diana feed him an ice chip carefully before saying: “They’ve been wonderful.”

It made Steve smile, briefly. “Had practice.”

“Your father was telling me that your exploits do not quite match those of your mother and sister,” Diana said, trying to keep that smile there, to ignore the bruises on his face and that she could not hold his hand because of the cast and the monitors.

“Can’t argue,” Steve said. He shifted, huffed a little and confessed: “Dad had cancer awhile back. In remission now but they spent a lot of time in hospitals.”

That long a sentence seemed to exhaust him. He tried to move again and, to Diana’s alarm, grimaced.

“Steve, don’t,” she said, urgently. Her fingers had gone white on the side of his bed. “I’ll get the nurse.”

“S’okay,” Steve croaked. “Just discomfort. Not pain.”

Diana was torn and then Steve looked at her, vulnerable and a little embarrassed and still, so full of love of her. “Drugs are working. I just. M’ throat hurts.”

The doctor had said it would and Steve’s voice sounded painfully hoarse. Diana fed him more ice chips, which seemed to help, but still felt like such a little thing. Too little a thing.

Diana was an Amazon and a goddess and Steve believed, had always believed, that she could save the world.

But she couldn’t do anything to help him except slowly feed him ice chips. She hadn’t been able to _stop_ this at all.

As much as Steve seemed more present, this time, everything still seemed to exhaust him. His eyelids were already starting to droop.

Helen’s snorting stopped abruptly. Diana did not even have time to look up before she was around the bed, sitting close beside Diana so she was in Steve’s limited field of vision. Diana could tell she noticed the difference right away too.

Steve’s smile went soft and boyish in a way that made Diana’s heart ache. “Hi mom.”

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Helen said.

“Uh oh, sweetheart. Must be bad,” Steve said. He was mumbling now, fighting to stay awake.

His mother leaned over him to kiss his forehead and touched his cheek carefully. She stayed close, her voice gentle but firm.

“You need to rest,” she told him. “You’re going to need a lot of rest the next few days. Don’t fight it. Your body needs it. Just rest.”

“Yes ma’am,” Steve murmured, his voice torn between annoyance and impossible fondness.

He could not have resisted either way. He was asleep again within moments.

Helen sat back in the empty chair next to Diana and exhaled, tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling for a long moment. Diana did not move, she did not want to look away from Steve’s face or the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“We’ll make a schedule. Now that he’s been properly awake,” Helen said in a tone that both conveyed that she was plotting out tactics for the long range and that she expected her orders to be obeyed. “We’ll burn out otherwise.”

Diana knew she was right, she knew she would defer to her plans, no matter that Diana was the goddess.

She just did not know how she was going to manage it.

—

Diana managed for four days before she hit a wall.

She arrived at the hospital to find Steve asleep, looking wane, and his father reading in the chair by his bed, not looking much better. He smiled at Diana but she could see the weariness in his eyes.

“He had a bad night last night,” Henry told her. “Dr. Johnson said he’s fine. He just pushed himself a little too much yesterday.”

Diana felt a hot rush of guilt in the back of her throat. Arthur has visited yesterday, then Barry and Vic, then Lois and Clark. Steve had wanted to see them all but...Diana knew while he didn’t pretend to be well, he also didn’t want them — especially Barry — to feel guilty and had forced himself to stay awake and alert while they were there, well after Diana could see he was growing exhausted.

She regretted not calling Clark and Lois after Barry and Vic left and telling them to come another day.

“Setbacks happen,” Henry said, quietly. “He just has to take it easier today.”

Diana raised an eyebrow because she knew Steve. “That is unlikely.”

“We can always call Helen in,” Henry offered with his kind smile and a very sneaky twinkle in his eye. “He’ll glower at her but she’ll stare him down.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Diana told him.

Henry nodded, hesitated for a moment but said: “I’m going to head out now, if you’re all right. He’s likely to sleep for a few hours now and...it was a long night.”

“Of course,” Diana said, though they usually intentionally overlapped who was staying with Steve for at least a little while. Henry did look very tired.

Diana tried not to let her dismay show. That meant Steve had likely been in a great deal of pain last night.

It was barely two hours before Steve was awake. He was groggy, grumpy and clearly in pain, but he did not reach for the button that he could have pressed to receive another dose of pain medication.

He ignored it.

Diana wasn’t surprised by it. She was disappointed. Steve had literally had emergency surgery five days ago. He had always been stubborn, impatient and dismissive when it came to his own well being, but it made a cold, hard pit form in Diana’s stomach.

This was just going to happen again.

Diana had known that. Of course she had. Steve was going to get well and go back to being their liaison. If he had not been doing that, he would have still been a SEAL, conducting some of the most dangerous missions for the US military, because that was the career had had actively pursued.

Diana just...She hadn’t had time to think about it, had been too worried about Steve right _now_. She had been able to ignore that this was going to happen again and again and again.

Until she lost him.        

And she knew that. That was part of who he was. She didn’t even want to change him but...

She had been trying to ignore his bruises, ignore what they meant, and now they were all she could see.

(Normally, Steve would have picked up on her mood. Normally, Steve was not overtired and unable to shake how everything that didn’t outright _hurt_ ached annoyingly. Normally, he wasn’t worrying about how long it would take for him to recover and about when Waller would appear to debrief him and how tense and sad Diana looked and the things he hadn’t told her yet because the only moments he had had the energy to, his parents had been in the room, and they didn’t know that this was one life of many for him.

And he was supposed to start physical therapy today. When he felt like shit.

But he was going to do it. He told the nurse as much when she came in to ask if he was ready to go.)

When the nurse came in to ask Steve if he was ready to go to physical therapy and Steve made himself sit up and say yes, Diana could not believe it. She stared at him — glared at him — as the nurse left to get him a wheelchair.

Steve bristled. “What?”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Diana asked. She did not mean to let her anger and frustration over the whole situation seep into her voice but it was there.  

“If I don’t do it I’ll be another day behind,” Steve replied. “People do physical therapy for a reason not because it’s fun.”

Diana tried to stay calm. She tried not to look at the bruises that still stained his face, even as they went an ugly green and yellow around the edges. “Your father said you had a bad night last night. A day isn’t going to hurt.”

Steve made a face at the words _your father said_ but ignored them, instead repeating, as if it should be obvious: “Except it’ll put me a day behind.”

“You do not have a deadline,” Diana retorted. “Why do you need to rush?”

“This isn’t rushing,” Steve said, sharply. “I’ve been injured before. I know how this goes. And, yeah, I had a bad night. I’m going to have bad nights, okay? Fucking everything hurts and I can’t get comfortable and the fucking drugs make me fucking constipated and nauseous and I just want to fucking cough without feeling like I’m going to die.”

Steve flushed dully — he had just barked at the love of his life, his soulmate about being _constipated_ . But all Diana had heard was _feeling like I’m going to die._

“You’re going to make yourself worse,” Diana said. “You’re going to hurt yourself because you’re being a stubborn _man._ You don’t need to. The world won’t end.”

 _The world can wait,_ she had meant.

Steve stared at her, slack jawed for a moment. “Is that what you think?”

“Steve-”

“No,” Steve said, shortly. “I’m going to PT.”

“Steve!” Diana said. “You’re not listening to me.”

“No, you’re not listening to me! I can’t believe that’s what you think!” Steve said, hurt and anger and frustration written all over his face. “I am going to PT because that’s how you get _better_ . You slack off and you get behind and you get _worse_.”

“And I know it’s going to suck and it’s probably going to hurt and I’ll probably come back and want to take an extra dose of painkillers and pass out,” Steve said. “And I might feel worse tomorrow but the next day I’ll feel better. This isn’t ego.”

Diana almost went to him because she didn’t agree and she didn’t think she understood completely but at the last he had sounded so defeated and a little out of breath...

The nurse pushed open the door. “All ready to go?”

“Yes,” Steve said. She helped unhook him from the remaining monitor and capped his IV. Steve held himself stiffly and kept his good hand on his bed for balance and he levered himself into the wheelchair but he managed by himself.

“He’ll be back in about forty-five minutes,” the nurse said, helpfully, looking between them.

Diana nodded.

For a moment, Steve looked like he was going to say something to her, the expression on his face half hopeful, half hurt. He even opened his mouth but then closed it again.

They left.

Diana stood silently in his hospital room for a moment. She wiped her face.

(She was going to lose him again.

It wasn’t about physical therapy. It wasn’t about him being stubborn or a soldier. She loved him that way. She didn’t want to change him.

And even if she could, it would not make a difference. In the end, she would still lose him.

She would lose him again. To something like this or an accident or just old age. She would lose him saving the day, or saving his friends, or saving two little girls, or in his sleep after a lifetime together.

She was still going to lose him.)

Diana stepped out of the room. She just. She needed a moment. It made her feel guilty, even though Steve wasn’t there—

(Steve had wanted her to go to physical therapy with him. That was what he was going to ask. Diana knew that. He didn’t have to say it for her to know.)

—stepping through the doors of the hospital.

The cool Fall air was a relief, even with the clatter of people walking in and out and the shrill sound of ambulances. Diana closed her eyes, just for a moment.

(She had known the cost going in. What was the matter with her?)

When she opened them, she saw Napi standing on the other side of the sidewalk.

\--

Steve was already back in his hospital bed when Diana returned to his room.

(She had asked Napi to come back with her. He had smiled and said: “Not today. He’ll be too tired today. Steve’s never found it easy, being injured.”

Diana knew that as well as anyone.)

He was facing away from where she usually sat and at first she thought he was asleep. But then she sighed and he shifted at the sound, turning over to look at her in the doorway. He grimaced, hand clumsily going to his ribs.

Diana was at his bed in an instant.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, immediately reassuring. “Just turned too fast.”

“Okay,” Diana said.

She sat down in the chair next to his bed. They stared at each other, unsure of what to say. They hadn’t really fought before in this lifetime.

(“I saw you once, last time,” Napi told her. “At the Vietnam Memorial.”

Diana swallowed. She did not think she would ever forget that, the way Steve shook, the way he seemed to shatter under her hands despite his best efforts.

“We would have welcomed you, if you can gotten in touch,” Diana said. “Perhaps not then but later.”

Napi shook his head. “I would have made things worse from him, I think. Etta and Sameer only had the memories of themselves to stir in him but you and I are gods. He was too fragile for the memory of more past lives to be sparked in him.”

“He remembers everything, this time,” Diana said, quietly.)

“How did it go?” Diana ventured finally.

“It sucked,” Steve said, frankly. “Mostly more breathing exercises to make sure my lung heals well. Some extremely light stretching. Showing me how to walk so that I don’t hurt my toes more or fuck up how I walk in the future.”

He shifted against the pillows more, wincing again. Diana couldn’t stand it.

“Steve,” she said. “Stop.”

Steve leaned back against the pillows, grimacing again. He looked so frustrated. “I _can’t._ Literally nothing is _comfortable_ but if I stay in one position too long I get sore.”

(“Getting him to admit he was injured was like pulling teeth,” Napi told her. “He nearly _died_ once because he didn’t want to bother us with it. I would not take it lightly that he’s admitting a weakness to you.”)

“Then let me help you,” Diana said.

He looked wary but she stayed firm. After a moment, he nodded. They managed to get the bed rearranged so he was slightly less uncomfortable.

When they were done, he tilted his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes for a moment, taking slow breaths that would have made him cough painfully only days ago. Despite all her worries and his frustrations, Steve was actually healing well and quickly.

(“I know what you’re scared of,” Napi said. “It is a natural thing to fear. But what are you willing to let that fear cost you?”)

“Thought you’d gone,” Steve said, his voice hesitant, after they had sat in silence for long moments.

“Just to get some air,” Diana said.

Steve nodded and went quiet again.

(“He’s still just a man, Diana,” Napi said. “This time and all the others. He may be better blessed in this lifetime but he’s still going to hurt and make mistakes and be unsure.”

“Not of me,” Diana said.

Napi was quiet for a moment. “Steve will always believe in you. I don’t think he knows how not to, though sometimes he would like to. He is your most ardent disciple.”

Diana frowned. “That is not what we are to each other.”

“No, but if you chose it, that is what it would be,” Napi said. “All men have doubts. He cannot doubt you; he must doubt himself. Steve orbits you like you are the sun. But even just as himself, he is one of many planets. How could he not wonder if sometimes you look at him and wish for one of the ones you lost? Or that one day you might become sick of losing?”

Napi smiled sadly: “That is the cost of remembering for him.”)

“I am sorry that I did not go to physical therapy with you,” Diana told him. Steve looked more surprised than she expected.

“It’s fine,” Steve said. “I managed.”

“No, it’s not,” Diana said. “You wanted me there.”

Steve hesitated. “I did. I’ve...recovered from serious injuries before, not quite like this but...”

He shrugged. “It’s easier with help. But...I need you to trust me to know my own limits.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Diana said. “But I worry.”

To her surprise, Steve looked more quietly upset than she had seen him in this lifetime.

“I know,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t have blamed you, if you’d gone, you know.”

(“One day I will lose him again,” Diana said. “It might be to something like this or it might be to something I can’t foresee. I never expected...”

Her voice still choked, when she thought of how she had last lost him, how unfair it was to have him snatched away from the life they had been building together, the hole his absence had left behind.

“I will lose him again,” she repeated.

“Yes,” Napi said.)

“I can’t imagine what it’s like, being the one left behind,” Steve said. He was looking down at his own hands, on the hospital blankets.

(“He is a mortal,” Napi said. “You will always lose him.”

He paused. “Would it be easier not to know him?”

Diana stopped. “What?”

“He is put in your path but twice now it has been your choice to know him,” Napi said. “You could have walked away after those first meetings. I cannot say how that would have turned out for him—”

Diana shivered at the thought.

“—but it may have spared you pain,” Napi said. He looked at her. “Or would it?”

Diana’s mouth felt dry.

“You are already entangled with this one, of course, but when he goes—” Diana flinched; Napi continued. “You could track him, as your friend would, from birth. You could avoid him entirely. His life could be a mystery. His death could be nothing but a notification on your phone.”

Diana felt sick. The possibility of having Steve in the world with her and choosing not to know him felt wrong in every atom of her being.

She did not know if it would hurt any less. She would have to kill so much of her own soul for it to even be a possibility that she was not sure it would even matter.)

“I know it hurts,” Steve said, his voice faltering. “I don’t know what I would do if it was me instead.”

Diana put her hand over his. Barry had signed his cast, big and bold. Lois has coloured the letters in, after.

“Could you have walked past me that day and said nothing?” She asked.

Steve’s face showed just how appalled he was by that idea, as clearly as if he had had the Lasso of Hestia wrapped around his wrist. “No. Never.”

“And I would not have forgiven you for it,” Diana told him.

Steve took a breath and looked at her. His eyes were tired but bright. Diana knew this was not the first time he had dwelt on this.

“I love you so much,” Steve told her. “I hate that that ends up hurting you.”

Taking his hand was not enough She perched on the edge of his bed so he could feel the closeness of her body and she could feel his.

“The only way to avoid that hurt is to not know you at all,” Diana told him. She touched his cheek, very gently. The bruises were unavoidable. “I will always choose to have you in my life, Steve. It is always worth it. No matter how short the time.”

Steve blinked rapidly against the moisture building in his eyes. He turned his face into her palmed and kissed it, ignoring the way it made his bruises twinge when her fingers touched them.

(“Does it ever get easier?” Diana asked.

Napi looked at her, and almost smiled. Diana never forgot how much older he was than her but he rarely made her feel that difference.

“My losses are not the same as yours,” Napi reminded her. “I hope, for your sake, your experience remains different.”

“I did not find it any easier, the last time he was in the world, and suffering, and I knew of it but did not know him,” Napi added, becoming more like the man he normally appeared to be. “For whatever that is worth.”

It was not a comfort to hear. Diana steeled herself but did not hesitate to ask the question she dreaded most: “Would Steve be happier if I stayed away?”)

“I do worry about about losing you,” Diana told him. “But what I worry most right now is you pushing yourself too hard too fast. Do not forgot that I have seen you sacrifice your health for a cause before.”

“I wasn’t wrong about PT today,” Steve objected, more calmly.

“You weren’t,” Diana agreed. “But I spoke to your doctor on the way in. You insisted on reducing your pain medication last night _against_ her advice.”

Steve had the decency to blush a little. “I thought it would be fine.”

“You had emergency surgery five days ago,” Diana reminded him. “You’re not getting to get better if you’re in so much discomfort you can’t sleep.”

“I know, I did take a full dose after PT,” Steve said. He was clearly frustrated but there was no heat in his voice, just misery. “I hate being on painkillers okay? They make me feel...disconnected and, honestly, a little sick.”

Diana wasn’t surprised the side effects bothered Steve. They had in his last lifetime too.

“We’ll talk to the doctor about what we can do instead,” Diana told him. She bit her lip. “I don’t like the idea of you being in pain, Steve. I can’t stand it.”

“I thought I had a better handle on it than I did,” Steve confessed. “My dad would tell you we’re all terrible patients.”

Diana snorted. “I have already experienced that with you.”

Steve face softened. “I thought I didn’t remind you much of him.”

Diana frowned. That was not a conversation they had ever had.

In this lifetime, they had folded their lives together relatively easily and Steve had been more willing to be open with her from the beginning. He was more solid within himself than he had been since Diana first knew him and had spent more time assuaging her worries than dwelling on his own.

That had, perhaps, left more room for them to grow. Not in her but in himself.

“I see you as yourself, Steve,” Diana told him. “There is a core of you that does not change. That you are too often willing to sacrifice your well-being for the greater good is an element of that, as is your rush to return to the fight. That was very apparent in your last lifetime, but it was in your others as well.”

“What you reminds me most of _him_ is your kindness,” Diana said. Steve looked confused; he had obviously not expected that. Diana had to look down for a moment. It was the only way she could continue. “We never had enough time, in your other lifetimes, for me to catch more than glimpses of it. But, even when he was most unwell, he struggled so hard to keep from being unkind to others, even if it meant keeping himself apart from the people he loved. And when he started getting better, that kindness, it just blossomed in him.”

“And with you, you make it seem like it’s just second nature,” Diana said, looking up at Steve again. His mouth was open, she couldn’t believe he looked this surprised. “Did you not know this about yourself?”

“It’s not...something I put a lot of thought into,” Steve said, falteringly.

Diana rubbed her thumb over his cheek, away from the bruises. “You do it without expectation of anything in return. That is rarer than you would think in Man’s World.”

“I’m not selfless, Diana,” Steve said, his voice quiet.

“No, you’re not,” Diana agreed. “But you are kind. Stubborn. And many other things. And I love _you_ very much.”

(“You cannot know whether he would be better or worse off without you,” Napi said, gently. “But, Diana, I think you know as well as I do what his choice would be.”)

\--

Waller arrived at the hospital six days after Superman flew Steve through its doors.

(Diana was surprised until Vic and Barry confessed to...delaying her through Vic’s various means. When Steve found out he gave them a _very serious_ talking to about how they should not underestimate the Director.)

Diana and both of Steve’s parents were there when she arrived. They had just had a meeting with his doctor. Provided there were not additional complications, they were planning to release him within the next forty-eight hours.

Diana worried that Waller would prove to be a complication.

She was, at least, at her most polite with Steve’s parents.  

“Col. Trevor. Mr. Trevor,” she said, in a flat, bland voice, after entering the room without knocking or announcing herself. “Captain Trevor. Your debriefing can no longer be delayed.”

She glanced at Steve’s parents, as if she were deferring to them. Diana knew she was not. “May we have the room? This shouldn’t take too long.”

Helen, who had bristled immediately when Waller entered the room, looked at Steve, her jaw clenched and her chin tilted up. Henry looked between them in faint confusion.

“Sure,” Steve said, without glancing at his parents before he agreed. Then he looked at his mother in a very deliberate way. “Mom? Dad, why don’t you guys go get some dinner?”

Helen rose up from her chair with her back ramrod straight, gathering up her purse and coat with great dignity. She stopped to kiss Steve’s cheek and tell him: “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

She gave Waller a nod that in no way suggested deference. “Ma’am.”

They hadn’t made it through the door way before Waller looked at Diana and asked: “Aren’t you hungry Ms. Prince?”

She had been holding Steve’s hand before Waller had arrived. He squeezed it now, just enough that she would feel it. Diana swallowed down the response she wanted to give.

“You could bring me back something?” Steve said, keeping his voice light.

Diana smiled at him, completely artificial. “Of course.”

Helen had paused in the doorway, maneuvering so Henry was in the hall behind her. She waited for Diana to join them.

As soon as they had all stepped outside, Waller shut the door firmly behind them.

“Who on earth—” Henry began.

Helen took his arm firmly, her own tight, fake smile plastered on her face. “We can talk about it in the food court, dearest.”

Henry looked at his wife and nodded. “Ah, yes. I am hungry.”

Diana realized Helen had noticed Waller’s...body guards lounging conspicuously in the waiting room as well. The waited until they were out of the ward, well out of earshot, before they spoke again.

“I ‘forgot’ my phone in the room,” Henry said, quietly. He grimaced slightly. “Couldn’t get the damned thing on record, though.”

“She’ll check,” Helen said, tone completely sure. “I don’t know her but I know the type. She’ll check the room.”

Diana had already pulled out her cell phone. “Then it may be to our advantage that you could not get it to record before we left.”

 _Waller in with Steve. Henry’s phone in room. Can you access?_ Diana texted to Vic.

She did not have to wait more than a minute before there was a reply. _Audio only. Route thru ur phone & record? _

  1. _Careful she doesn’t catch you_. Diana warned.



Vic replied with a _;p_. Which made Diana think he was with Barry or perhaps that Barry was just rubbing off on him too much.   

Diana’s phone screen changed, as if she were on an active call. She held it to her ear.

“—ready debriefed,” Waller was saying. “That was not appreciated.”

“I haven’t spoken to the League as a whole yet,” Steve said, mildly. His voice was always calm when he spoke to Waller, as it had been when he conceded to Haig. Diana understood why now; she liked it’s necessity no more than she had then. “Aquaman’s questions were limited.”

“Did you record them?” Waller asked.

“No,” Steve said.

“Why not?” Waller asked.

“It did not occur to me at the time,” Steve said. Then volunteered. “I was still on heavy pain killers at that point, Director. The debriefing was limited because I kept falling asleep. My mother was also present, if you would like to follow up with her.”

Waller paused. “Your mother stayed for a discussion of how you were tortured by a madman?”

“She insisted, as I was on dilaudid at the time,” Steve said.

“She didn’t put up much of a fuss today,” Waller commented, dryly and dismissive in a way that annoyed Diana.

“I’m off the hard stuff now, Director,” Steve said. “And she understands the Chain of Command.”

Waller was silent for a moment. Then: “Why Curry?”

“Director?”

“Why was Curry the one to debrief you?”

“My understanding is that Batman refuses to come to the hospital,” Steve said. “It seemed inappropriate for Wonder Woman to do it. I don’t know how Aquaman was decided on outside of those factors.”

(Bruce had refused to come to the hospital either was Bruce Wayne or Batman after that first night. Clark — or rather Lois — had visited on the pretense that she knew Steve, having actually interviewed him on background once when writing a piece about his sister.

It had seemed very coincidental, when they realized it. Diana believed less and less in coincidences when it came to her loved ones, though Steve could not remember Lois from any previous lives.

Arthur made the most sense, for a limited debriefing before Steve could speak to all of them. Both he and Steve had been initially flummoxed by the idea but Arthur had comported himself well.)

“You assured me that you could maintain your professionalism despite your relationship with Ms. Prince,” Waller commented.

“That’s why she did not debrief me for the League,” Steve said.

“What did you discuss with Mr. Curry?” Waller asked.

“From what I can remember, we discussed whether or not Graves or the...demon things posed any continued risk. From what I observed, I believe they’re neutralized but emphasized my recollections were compromised by the circumstances,” Steve said. “We discussed some of what was done to me. Aquaman was somewhat reluctant to go into much detail because of my mother’s presence. I have discussed it more fully with Wonder Woman.”

“Why?”

“On a personal level, she was worried,” Steve replied.

“Should she be?”

“I don’t think so,” Steve replied. “But it would be negligent not to order a psych evaluation before I return to active duty.”

Diana knew from experience that Steve could fool those. She doubted he had lost the ability from one lifetime to the next. Though Waller could not know that, Diana imagined she somehow knew Steve would have no trouble passing a psych eval.

“Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we,” Waller said. “You were in Central City when you were taken.”

Diana had found an alcove to settle in. Steve’s parents had actually gone to get food. It was a show of trust in their faith that she would protect their son that touched Diana.

Most of what Waller questioned Steve about were things Diana already knew, things Steve would repeat to the rest of the League, though he downplayed Grave torturing him in front of Barry and Vic, in another week’s time, when they would meet at the manor.   

(Barry had enough guilt without hearing how Graves had beaten Steve, how he had broken his fingers and his wrist, how the Asuras had beset him.)

But there always seemed to be things that Waller knew that they did not. And as one hour dragged into two, Diana could tell Steve was flagging.

She checked her watch. The dose of painkillers administered through Steve’s remaining IV would have been released. They were no longer as strong but if Steve didn’t eat they made him particularly nauseous and fatigued.

And Waller’s presence meant he hadn’t gotten dinner before the dose hit.

“We have been interrogating Graves since he was taken into custody,” Waller was saying. “He said you did not break. He was surprised.”

That surprised Diana. They had not spoken of that.

Steve waited a beat. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Coming from him, no,” Waller said. “He mostly viewed you as an annoyance and maybe as a way to make Wonder Woman more human by experiencing loss.”

Steve actually snorted in front of Waller. It made Diana worry all the more. She was going to have to intervene soon and Steve would not thank her for it.

“I figured he was crazy. I didn’t realize he was delusional,” Steve said, then more softly than Diana thought he meant: “She doesn’t need any _lessons_ in loss.”

“Oh?” Waller said, as casually as Diana thought she knew how.

“She’s been here a hundred years,” Steve said. They both knew that Waller was already aware of that. “She’s seen more change than any of us and everyone she first met has died of old age at this point.”

He said it so dismissively, as if it were entirely obvious. Diana wondered how much Waller bought it. She had learned very quickly not to underestimate Steve.

“Graves did not seem to be aware of that,” Waller said, finally. “He was not surprised you withstood the physical torture. Your resistance to the Asuras and to his threats surprised him. I suppose he thought a _soldier_ wasn’t up to the task.”

“Sailors have hidden depths,” Steve said, his tone bone dry.

“I doubt he was aware there is a difference,” Waller said, her voice monotone and bland, as if what she was saying had no consequence. “Him threatening your family didn’t give you pause?”

“Of course it gave me pause,” Steve replied. “Director, you’ve met my mother now and I know you would have investigated my family when I signed up.”

“I did,” Waller said. “Your father is the weak point.”

“My mother would rip the head off anyone who came near my father,” Steve said.

Waller didn’t say anything to indicate she agreed but she didn’t disagree either. Instead, she said: “Most men don’t take well to people threatening their little sisters.”

“Allie enlisted at 18 and was one of the first women to qualify as a Ranger,” Steve said. “I’m more scared of her.”

“Sounds like I should recruit her,” Waller said.

“It would be a waste of your time. She’s career,” Steve said.

“I suppose I should count myself blessed that my liaison doesn’t break under torture,” Waller said, her voice sounding anything but pleased.

“Everyone has a breaking point,” Steve said, voice mild. “Graves just didn’t find mine.”

“Which is?” Waller asked, her voice still calm and deceptively bland.

Diana was already moving. She wouldn’t reach his room face enough to throw Waller against the wall or stop him from giving her more leverage against him while he was injured and drugged and vulnerable but she could keep stop the damage there.

“Don’t know,” Steve said. “I had SERE training. Never found any after that.”

There was a pause. Diana rounded the corner into the ward. She could see Henry in the waiting room, Helen pacing in front of it.

“According to Grav—” Waller began.

“Need that bedpan behind you,” Steve said, cutting her off. “Now.”

“What?”

“Gonna be sick.”

There were scuffling sounds, then retching, and then one nurse was pushing through the door before Diana could, followed quickly by another. Waller’s bodyguards jumped up and Helen was up like a shot, blocking the door by crowding it to see what was happening, like any mother would.

“Out!” the nurse commanded. “Everyone out!”

The other nurse looked ready to start bodily removing people. Waller exited with a great deal of dignity before it came to that. She was barely through the door before she came face to face with Helen, who looked murderous. Diana suspected she did not look much better.

“Oh dear,” Henry said, sounding flustered and worried as he somehow managed to accidentally drift between them. “I hope this doesn’t delay his release date. Do you think vomiting is something the doctor would make him stay an extra day for?”

Waller did not roll her eyes at Henry, Diana had never seen her give that much away, but she did look at him with enough derision and dismissal that it set Diana’s teeth on edge. She did not bother with the pleasantries or saying goodbye, she simply turned on her heel and left.

Helen’s jaw only unclenched when Waller was gone. She took a long, slow breath.

“It was probably for the best for you to step in and diffuse that, dearest,” Helen said, quietly.

“Seemed unwise to let you coldcock Steven’s boss or, really, the director of anything,” Henry said. “No matter how much she deserved it.”

Helen snorted. Under any other circumstances, Diana would have smiled. Half of Steve’s talent as a spy lay in his ability to make people believe he was completely guileless. Diana knew it came from lifetimes of practice but in this lifetime, it also seemed to have been inherited from his father.

The nurses, and the doctor that arrived moments after Waller left, finally let them back in with a stern warning that Steve needed to rest. They weren’t to keep him awake.

The room lights were dimmed and Steve was leaning back in the hospital bed with his eyes closed. Diana noticed immediately that he had a saline drip again, after having been judged okay to go off it just that morning.

“Oh Stevie,” Henry sighed, not hesitating for even a moment before moving forward to kiss Steve’s forehead.

“Hi dad,” Steve murmured. He cracked an eye open and then shut it again. He looked faintly embarrassed. “My toothbrush around?”

“I’ll get it,” Helen said.

Diana sat beside Steve, carefully taking his hand. She could hear his parents rummaging around for his toothbrush in the bathroom.

Steve didn’t open his eyes. His fingers curled around Diana’s hand for a moment but he gently pulled away. Before Diana could object, he had turned her hand over so her palm was facing up. He started tapping a random pattern against it.

Except...he repeated the pattern exactly. Once. Then twice. Diana frowned, opened her mouth to ask a question.

He added a distinct question mark after the third repetition.

Diana froze. She waited for him to repeat the pattern. Of course.

It was Morse code.

Steve repeated it. This time, Diana understood.

_Room bugged?_

Diana frowned. She wanted to have a better answer to give him.

_Unknown._

Steve frowned, then sighed. His parents came bustling back into the room just as he finished tapping out another message.

_We have to talk._

—

Steve’s release from the hospital was, thankfully, not delayed. The consequences of almost throwing up on Waller appeared, so far, to be receiving written notification of when he was expected to return to light duties. It was within his doctor’s recommended time frame.

(“Don’t over analyze it,” Steve told her. “I never try to ‘win’ with Waller. Taking her down requires a bigger fish than me. I keep up. I run interference for the League. And I try to make sure she can’t throw me under the bus for anything.”

“I don’t like it,” Diana said.

“Yeah, me either,” Steve said.)

It was a relief to bring him home.

(Steve’s first concern on walking through the door of his apartment was to flop down on his bed and groan, long and loud.

“Hospital beds are terrible,” he had declared. He looked up at Diana and smiled, his hand drifting against her side, as if the doctor hadn’t taken one look at them and gone over the ongoing ban on _adult activities_ twice.

As if his parents weren’t in the other room.

It was not a large apartment.

“You’re not unpacked yet, Stevie?” his father said from the other room. He sounded appalled. “You’ve been here nearly a year!”

Diana was surprised, somehow, that it had been that long already. Steve had moved in to this apartment just after officially becoming their liaison.

“Oh for—It’s just books dad!” Steve called back.

Henry, the former English teacher, made an outraged noise. “Steven!”

Diana was also deeply amused that Steve’s father seemed to call him Stevie or Steven exclusively.

Steve’s parents would stay another week before going back to California. The remaining boxes that had been shoved in corners and the backs of closets were unpacked by the time they left.)

Steve continued to recover well and relatively quickly.

He was still a terrible patient.

(“I hate being a burden,” he muttered, one afternoon after his physical therapist had refused to let him push himself as hard or as fast as he wanted to.

Diana pinched him.

“Ow,” Steve muttered, though Diana had been intentionally gentle about it.

“You’re not being a burden,” Diana told him.

Steve shrugged and did not look at her. But this was too important for Diana to let go of or ignore. She put her hand on his chin and turned his face so that he would meet her gaze.

“You are not a burden,” Diana repeated and held firm when he tried to pull away. “I have seen that kind of thinking swallow you whole before, Steve. I will do everything I can to keep it from happening again.”

“It’s not quite the same, I think,” Steve said quietly but he was listening and he did not look away from her.

“No,” Diana agreed. “But there are echoes. And, above all, I do not want to see you suffer needlessly.”

“Okay,” Steve said, his breathing hitching just a little. “Okay.”)

As soon as Steve’s parents had gone home, Diana asked Bruce and Vic to come over.

(Bruce had not been happy when Diana told him Steve suspected Waller of bugging his hospital room, that he was worried about her bugging his apartment. He had gone into a minor frenzy of sweeping the manor grounds for them.

He and Vic had found twenty. Five they were meant to discover. Fifteen they were not.

Waller had gotten as close as the potted plants lining the driveway. She hadn’t gotten any closer than that.

Not yet.)

They found at least two bugs in each room of Steve’s apartment.

 _They look recent._ Vic wrote on the whiteboard Steve had handed him when he had walked through the door — he had rolled his eyes at the time. _Want me to take care of them?_

 _Can you make it look accidental?_ Steve asked. He looked like he had resigned himself to moving.

Vic grinned. Silver strands shot out of his arm and into the router sitting benignly near Steve’s TV. There was a fizzing noise. Then it exploded.

“Shit,” Steve said, out loud.

It was likely the last thing Waller heard.

Diana was already writing on the board: _What did you just do?_

“Messed with the frequency,” Vic said. He was already rebuilding the router. It took him less than five minutes. “They’ll have to come fix the internet in your building, though. Sorry.”

Steve did not look convinced. “She wouldn’t rely on my wifi for her bugs.”

“Oh, no, that’s just the excuse you can use. Complain about it where she can overhear,” Vic said. “The bugs I reprogrammed to transmit nothing but a high pitched buzz. Only three of them have trackers in them. They’ll ‘glitch’ to show a loop of strange locations every three hours before showing up as back where they are now no matter what you do with them.”

“I’ll take them,” Bruce said. “For analysis.”

“Bruce made something that acts like a white noise machine on anything she plants in the future,” Vic said. “It plugs into an outlet. Simple. But he hasn’t deployed them around the manor yet.”

“Tell her that you have mice,” Bruce said.

“Mice?” Diana echoed.

“That’s how Wayne Electronics will be marketing them,” Bruce said. He paused. “Or maybe Wayne Foods.”

“Do they actually work?” Steve asked. Bruce looked offended. “I meant, what do they do to the mice?”

“Give them mouse tinnitus for as long as they’re in range,” Bruce said. He looked at Vic. “It could theoretically bother the bats if I installed them in the Bat Cave. I’d prefer not to test it.”

“And it could be useful to leave the bugs outside the manor,” Steve said, looking at Bruce.

Diana followed his train of thought. “In the future, there may be something you _want_ Waller to overhear.”

Bruce did not deny it. Steve sighed, looking serious.

“Be careful playing that game, Bruce,” he warned, though he did not tell him not to. “She won’t fall for it more than once.”

“It’s best to take precautions but leave our options open,” Bruce said. He pulled his phone out and tapped something into it swiftly. Both Steve and Diana’s phones buzzed.

“Schematics,” he said.

Diana did not roll her eyes at the blatant change of subject but it was a close thing. Steve was already pulling his phone out to look. “For what?”

Bruce smiled, very slightly. “He needs better protection than what they’re giving him.”

\--

They sat together on the couch after Bruce and Vic left. Steve looked weary. It was not the tiredness that had dogged him at the end of the day since he had been injured, which had only recently started to lift from his shoulders.

This was another kind of weariness. As if what he had been waiting to tell her was weighing him down.

It spoke of all the years, all the lives, behind him. It was a kind of weariness that she rarely saw in him in this lifetime.

“There’s a reason Graves didn’t break me,” Steve said. “I confused him. I think he might have succeeded otherwise.”

“I don’t understand,” Diana said, taking his hand. “What do you mean?”

Steve sighed. “He relied too much on the Asuras to get information on me. And they could see _everything_ but I don’t think they were expecting me to have past lives so close to the surface. They didn’t really...distinguish between them well.”

He shivered involuntarily and Diana squeezed his hand. He shook his head as if to clear it.

“Steve?” Diana asked, worried.

“Sorry. I’m okay,” Steve said, reassuringly, as he squeezed her hand back. He admitted: “I was a bit...mixed up, when you first rescued me.”

“Barry thought you didn’t recognize him at first,” Diana told him.

Steve looked surprised. “I don’t remember that.”

He let go of her hand to scrub a hand through his hair and pinch the bridge of his nose before it fell back into his lap, their fingers brushing together but not quite entwining. “My first...mission — that was the way I was thinking of it — was to get out. Secondary was to get to you. I can’t say I was paying attention to much beyond that. I remember shooting at Graves and seeing you attack him but things got a little fuzzy after that.”

“You were in and out of consciousness by the time I was finished with Graves. You only regained it for a moment when I got to you,” Diana told him.

It was not surprising. What Graves had done to him...

Something of her fear and revulsion must have shown on Diana’s face. Steve reached up and brushed his fingers over her cheek. His eyes were soft and full of love and concern as he looked at her.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Steve said. “I’m okay.”

“I know,” Diana said. She caught his hand and kissed the tips of his fingers. It had been close; it would be close again.

(One day she would lose him but for now for he was sitting close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body as she brushed her fingers over thrum of his heartbeat at the pulsepoint in his wrist.)

She kept hold of his hand as she took a breath and drew them back to the topic they had avoided for perhaps too long. “What do you mean by mixed up?”

“The Asuras found my worst fears and my lost loved ones,” Steve huffed. “But my life has been pretty good, this time around, you know? So they zeroed in on the ones that weren’t.”

Diana had half-suspected as much already. It still made her ache. “Oh Steve.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said with a sad, half smile. “It..I won’t say it didn’t suck but it worked to our advantage, in the end.”

“Who did they show you?” Diana asked.

“Nick was the main ghost,” Steve said, looking down at their joined hands. “But people I served with seemed to be their main choice for torment. Didn’t matter which life they were from.”

Diana had not killed Graves; a part of her had wanted to. She wanted to more after hearing that. She knew the shades the Asuras has created for her, what they had taunted and promised. She had known Steve long and well enough to guess some of what they had told him, especially if they hadn’t distinguished between this life and his last.

“You’ve met my parents, my sister is worse. Threatening them wasn’t going to work because...we would all make the same choices about what we would sacrifice to keep others safe,” Steve continued. He took a breath and looking bleak. “The person Graves tried to threaten me with was Tracy.”

A part of Diana burned with rage that Graves had threatened Steve’s family.

Another part of her was oddly relieved.

“Tracy died six years ago,” Diana said.

(Diana had not kept in touch with Tracy Trevor the same way she had with Maya. They had not been close in the same way.

Still, Steve had loved her and, after her husband had died and she had had to get a job as a receptionist, had sent her money every month to help keep them afloat. Diana had continued that, after Steve was gone, until she got remarried and Tracy thanked her but said it wasn’t necessary anymore.

She had been seventy-six when she died. The doctors said it has been a stroke, in her sleep. That she hadn’t suffered.

Diana hadn’t spoken to Tracy for a decade by then but she went to her funeral if only to see that Steve’s niece and nephew were still well and whole.)

“I know,” Steve said. “After all the memories hit, I looked up her obituary.”

He looked at her sadly, as if he knew he was going to cause her grief and wished he didn’t have to. “ _I_ knew it but...but _he_ didn’t. When he died, she was alive and they were trying to fix things. That’s what _he_ knew. And when the Asuras tried for my weak points that’s what they found. That’s what they fixated on.”

Diana knew why immediately, though it hurt to admit. “You haven’t had any family to target in your other lives when I knew you. Not until now.”

Steve hesitantly nodded. “Not in the ones since I met you. Those are the ones I remember best, like they’re a part of _me_. I don’t think they realized they were separate lives. They ignored the ones before that that are fuzzier.”

“And you could?” Diana asked, because she remembered what Barry had said and the way Steve had hesitated when he first woke up.

“I...knew what _wasn’t_ my life,” Steve said. “I knew when something was wrong but after awhile, I was so focussed on making sure I knew what was _past_ that what wasn’t got a little blurry.”

Diana’s heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t even _known_ to worry about that. Graves had had Steve for _days._ She framed his face with her hands and looked into his eyes, as if they hadn’t been clear and present for weeks already. “Steve.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, he put his hand over one of hers. “It cleared up pretty fast once they were destroyed. It just...took me a minute to get a hold of what was real.”

He paused. “I don’t think all the rest of it helped either.”

Diana swallowed. The rest of it being torture and emergency surgery and anesthetic and pain. “I’m sorry that we did not get to you sooner.”

“I knew you were coming,” Steve said with a belief so unshakable and strong it made Diana feel like she could only be worthy of it. “They couldn’t make me doubt that. You’re constant. I would always know you.”

“They made me believe you were dead,” Diana confessed, her heart still aching with it.

“Bruce told me,” Steve said. “I’ve left you before, when I haven’t wanted to. I’m sorry they could use it against you.”

“Your ‘ghost’ said it was too late,” Diana said. Her eyes stung. Steve looked like his heart was breaking. “That I was too late to save you again, like I always am. But that I could still be with you.”

Steve inhaled sharply. For a moment, he looked angrier than Diana thought she had seen him in this lifetime.

“I would never want that for you,” Steve said fiercely. “Never. The world needs you.”

“I need you,” Diana told him.

“You don’t. You never have,” Steve said, a proud, awed smiled flitting over his face for a moment. “But I am still and will always be yours.”

Diana kissed him. He tasted the same. He felt the same. Diana thought he felt more like home to her than anywhere else in the universe would anymore.

“I love you,” Diana told him, their faces still so close that she breathed it over his lips. All she could see was the blue of his eyes.

“I love you too, Diana,” Steve replied.

They stayed like that, their heads bent close, for longer than could possibly be comfortable for Steve and his still healing ribs. He still looked vaguely disappointed when she pulled back because she knew he would never mention his discomfort.

“There’s another complication though,” Steve said. “Waller.”

Diana frowned. “What about her?”

“Graves was taken alive. I don’t doubt she’s questioning him for every piece of information she can get on the League,” Steve told her. “I don’t know exactly what she could do with the information that this isn’t my first time around the block but she’ll use it against me or you or the League if it furthers her agenda.”

“You think she knows?” Diana asked.

“I don’t know. Graves might not have told her he tried to break me by threatening my sister _Tracy_ not my sister Allison,” Steve said. “Even then, I have a _cousin_ name Tracy but...”

“Waller will investigate if she realizes the discrepancy,” Diana said.

Steve nodded. “I know you removed a lot of the files from my last life but I know there are still hard copies here and there. I found his obituary and his grave.”

Waller coming anywhere near the memory of Steve was abhorrent but Diana hadn’t managed to ability to erase him from the historical record entirely.

And she thought, as much as she sometimes wished she could hoard his memory all to herself, she did not _want_ him to disappear like that.

She had his military record and all the pictures she could find but his name was on documents and memorandums at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and there was a box of his achievements somewhere in their archive. He was on meeting minutes for the VVA and his niece and nephew kept framed photographs of him on their mantels. Sandy had given her son the middle name Steven.

She was not the only person who kept his memory. He had been there, he had lived. That mattered.

(There were still people who tended to the grave of a boy-soldier in France. There was a photo of a WWI pilot standing in a Belgian town that no longer existed.

Steve had lived and lived and lived again. Diana’s was never the only life he touched.)

She would not allow Waller to ruin that.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to keep it a secret forever. It’s only a matter of time before she figures it out,” Steve said. “And Waller would use me against you in a heartbeat if she ever felt she needed to.”

Diana’s blood burned. “That would be unwise of her.”

“You have to remember she’s playing a very different game than you,” Steve said, evenly.

“I do not care for her games,” Diana said. “I have never been interested in them.”

“I know,” Steve said, grinning crookedly, his love for her written so plainly on his face no one would have guessed he was such a successful spy. “The key is removing it as leverage she can use against us. She wouldn’t have a problem writing any of us off as collateral damage.”

“That is her mistake,” Diana said. It was not just about Steve. Waller was a threat against all of them that had to be managed carefully. Steve was succeeding so far but if Waller ran roughshod over his methods... “Steve?”

Steve did not look away from her as he waited for her to continue. “I will destroy her if she tries to take you from me.”

She knew from the look on Steve’s face that he didn’t doubt it, not for a moment.

—

The Fox touched down near an abandoned settlement near the border between Alberta and the Northwest Territories. There had been strange activity reported there recently at an abandoned mine. Then an army convoy that had gone to investigate had vanished. When Bruce dug into the recent purchasing records, he found a Lexcorp shell corporation as the current owner.

“Why don’t our baddies ever set up somewhere warm?” Arthur groused. “Is a lair in a volcano on a tropical island too much to ask for?”

“The first time I met you, you took off your coat and dove into the North Atlantic Ocean,” Bruce reminded him gruffly.

“My people don’t feel the cold the way you do,” Arthur smirked. “That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy more temperate waters.”

Batman scowled. He had been on edge for days and Arthur looked like he was going to poke him again. Diana deliberately sheaved her sword loudly enough for them to both hear.

They stopped.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

Before Bruce could answer, Steve and Vic emerged from the cockpit. Steve was in his Navy Working Uniform. The black bulletproof — and everything-else proof, as Barry described it — vest that Bruce had made him clashing terribly with the khaki of his shirt.  

Arthur snorted; Bruce glared at him. Diana gave them both a look.

Steve shrugged it off.

“This isn’t a mission that requires camouflage for me,” Steve said. “We’re all set. The nearest community isn’t exactly close but Mounties have been dispatched to warn them to stay inside and lock their doors until you give the all clear. A Brigade Group from the Canadian Army is on standby.”

He paused. “They are not particularly happy that they’re not the ones going in.”

“You going to go make nice?” Arthur asked.

“I am going to make nice with the Canadians, yes,” Steve confirmed. “Try not to do anything I will have to spend the next week explaining to the press.”

“No promises,” Arthur said, walking backwards as he hopped off the plane. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored!”

Steve shook his head. Bruce clapped him on the shoulder companionably but then waggled a finger in his face. “It works better if you wear the helmet.”

“I am not wearing a mask and cowl,” Steve responded. “The vest is enough. Save the superhero gear for the superheros.”

“I’ve almost got the body armour done,” Bruce told him, ignoring what he said completely. “It should be thin enough to wear under the uniform.”

“Great, I appreciate it,” Steve said, sincerely. He paused. “Can you make it in something other than black?”

Diana had to smother a laugh. Bruce didn’t answer. He was already on his way to the Batmobile.  

“Superman and Flash are in position,” Vic said, which meant their coms were live and it was Superhero names from there on.

There was a minor roar behind them before the Batmobile streaked out.

“Batman en route to position,” Vic quirked a smile and said very dryly. “I like the black.”

He waved at them before booming away himself.

Steve huffed. His eyes crinkled as he looked at Diana and smiled. “Fashion advice from a bunch of people who wear the loudest outfits on the planet.”

“You like my armour,” Diana replied, simply.

“I do,” Steve agreed. “But I know for a fact no one has been able to design an outfit that would keep you from standing out.”

“As long as you keep wear your Dress Whites in front of the press,” Diana teased and she leaned in to kiss him quickly when he groaned.

(Steve did not particularly enjoy that element of the job. Waller enjoyed it a little too much. It kept them from looking too closely at her.

No one outside those they considered family had made the connection between Steve and his past lives yet. But at some point, someone would recognize him and remember and say something. If they let it break the right way, if they said the right things, Steve was sure they could defuse it from becoming another weapon in Waller’s extensive chest.)

“Be safe,” Diana told him, quietly. He would not be directly in the fray this time.

That rarely meant he kept himself out of trouble.

“Promise,” Steve said, seriously.

She braced herself as he went back to the cockpit. The plane rose, lifting her up, over where she could see her comrades charging into action. She stood at the edge until the plane hovered there, waiting.

“You’re all clear,” Steve said and, despite the wind rushing by her, she could hear the grin in his voice over the coms. “Go save the world, Angel.”

Diana leapt.

\--

(Steve would die for the League. Or in a car accident. Or of a disease. Or in his sleep when he was an old man.

He would die and she would lose him.

And he would come back to Diana. For a day, or a month, for a handful or years, for decades. It did not matter.

Diana would find him and Steve would spend the rest of his life with her, from the moment he met her, in every lifetime he was given, until the end of time.)

       
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot believe this one is finally done! Hope the ending is happy enough for everyone! (If it's not, there may be a surprise coming tomorrow as soon as I finish editing it...)
> 
> The [David Graves](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/David_Graves_\(Prime_Earth\)) story line is from the New 52 comics. Although obviously I have made major changes since it doesn't end with Diana dating Superman. Because no. And also because I'm writing the characterizations from the DCEU not New 52. And also all the reincarnation stuff. 
> 
> If I seem to go on a local news rant it's because, though I am not a journalist myself, I work in a related profession and find the decline of newspapers/local news appalling, dangerous for democracy particularly at a local level, and was writing this when a bunch of layoffs were happening. Support your local paper and pay for your news when you can. It's important. Superman needs a job but more importantly, we need the Lois Lanes of the world to keep investigating the powerful. 
> 
> I spent so much time editing this I can't remember what else I was going to say in the endnotes. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.

**Author's Note:**

> [Title is from the ee cummings poem "dive for dreams." ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=80&issue=3&page=5)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> For the 2018 [WonderTrev](https://wondertrevnet.tumblr.com/) Secret Santa! I hope you like it [iamproudlysmile](http://iamproudlysmile.tumblr.com/)! Sorry it wasn't all finished on time, I promise the rest is nearly finished. 
> 
> I know the first chapter is dark. I promise it will get happier? At least a little?


End file.
